,Lr THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LOS ANGELES THE HISTOBY OF ENGLAND FROM ACCESSION OF JAMES H. BY THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY. VOL. III. PHILADELPHIA PORTER & COATES DA M // K3 CHAPTER XI. PAGE William and Mary proclaimed in London 13 Rejoicings throughout England ; Rejoicings in Holland 14 Discontent of the Clergy and of the Army 15 Reaction of Public Feeling 17 Temper of the Tories 18 Temper of the Whigs 21 Ministerial Arrangements 23 William his own Minister for Foreign Affairs 24 Danby 25 Halifax 26 Nottingham 27 Shrewsbury ; The Board of Admiralty 29 The Board of Treasury ; The Great Seal 30 The Judges 31 The Household 32 Subordinate Appointments .' 34 The Convention turned into a Parliament 35 The Members of the Two Houses required to take the Oaths 39 Questions relating to the Revenue 41 Abolition of the Hearth Money 43 Repayment of the Expenses of the United Provinces ; Mutiny at Ipswich * 45 The first Mutiny Bill 49 Suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act 53 Unpopularity of William 54 Popularity of Mary 57 The Court removed from Whitehall to Hampton Court 60 VOL. III. 6 CONTENTS. PAGE. The Court at Kensington 62 William's foreign Favourites 63 General Maladministration 65 Dissensions among Men in Office i . . . 67 Department of Foreign Affairs . 71 Religious Disputes 72 The High Church Party * 74 The Low Church Party 75 William's Views concerning Ecclesiastical Polity ; Burnet, Bishop of Salisbury 77 Nottingham's Views concerning Ecclesiastical Polity 81 The Toleration Bill 83 The Comprehension Bill 90 The Bill for settling the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy. . 99 The Bill for settling the Coronation Oath 113 The Coronation 115 Promotions 118 The Coalition against France ; The Devastation of the Pala- tinate 119 War declared against France 123 CHAPTER XH. State of Ireland at the Time of the Revolution ; The Civil Power in the hands of the Roman Catholics 125 The Military Power in the hands of the Roman Catholics. . . . 128 Mutual Enmity between the Englishry and the Irishry 128 Panic among the Englishry 129 History of the Town of Keiimare 130 Enniskillen '. 134 Londonderry ' 135 Closing of the Gates of Londonderry 137 Mountjoy sent to pacify Ulster 140 William opens a Negotiation with Tyrconnel 142 The Temples consulted 143 Richard Hamilton sent to Ireland on his Parole 144 Tyrconnel sends Mountjoy and Rice to France; Tyrconnel calls the Irish People to arms 146 Devastation of the Country ". 147 The Protestants in the South unable to resist 152 CONTENTS 7 PAGE. Enniskillen and Londonderry hold out ; Richard Hamilton marches into Ulster with an Army 153 James determines to go to Ireland 155 Assistance furnished by Lewis to James 156 Choice of a French Ambassador to accompany James ; The Count of Avaux 158 James lands at Kinsale ; James enters Cork 160 Journey of James from Cork to Dublin 162 Discontent in England 165 Factions at Dublin Castle 166 James determines to go to Ulster ; Journey of James to Ulster 172 The Fall of Londonderry expected 176 Succours arrive from England ; Treachery of Lundy ; The Inhabitants of Londonderry resolve to defend themselves. . . 177 Their Character 179 Londonderry besieged 184 The Siege turned into a Blockade 185 Naval Skirmish in Bantry Bay 187 A Parliament summoned by James sits at Dublin 188 A Toleration Act passed 193 Acts passed for the Confiscation of the Property of Protestants 194 Issue of Base Money 198 The Great Act of Attainder 200 James prorogues his Parliament ' 203 Persecution of the Protestants in Ireland 204 Effect produced in England by the News from Ireland 206 Actions of the Enniskilleners 209 Distress of Londonderry 210 Expedition under Kirke arrives in Lough Foyle ; Cruelty of Rosen 211 The Famine in Londonderry extreme 214 Attack on the Boom 217 The Siege of Londonderry raised 219 Operations against the Enniskilleners 222 Battle of Newton Butler 224 Consternation of the Irish 225 CHAPTER XHI. The Revolution more violent in Scotland than in England 227 Election for the Convention ; Rabbling of the Episcopal Clergy 229 8 CONTENTS. PAGE, State of Edinburgh . . 232 The Question of an Union between England and Scotland raised 233 Wish of the English Low Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in Scotland 237 Opinions of William about Church Government in Scotland. . 238 Comparative Strength of Religious Parties in Scotland 240 Letter from William to the Scotch Convention ; William's Instructions to his Agents in Scotland 241 The Dalrymples 242 Melville 245 James's Agents in Scotland : Dundee ; Balcarras 246 Meeting of the Convention 249 Hamilton elected President 250 Committee of Elections ; Edinburgh Castle summoned 251 Dundee threatened by the Covenanters 252 Letter from James to the Convention 254 Effect of James's Letter 255 Flight of Dundee 256 Tumultuous Sitting of the Convention 257 A Committee appointed to frame a Plan of Government 259 Resolutions proposed by the Committee 261 William and Mary proclaimed ; The Claim of Right; Abolition of Episcopacy 262 Torture 264 William and Mary accept the Crown of Scotland 266 Discontent of the Covenanters 267 Ministerial Arrangements in Scotland ; Hamilton ; Crawford. 269 The Dalrymples ; Lockhart : Montgomery ; Melville 270 Carstairs ; The Club formed : Annandale ; Ross 271 Hume ; Fletcher of Saltoun 272 War breaks out in the Highlands ; State of the Highlands . . . 274 Peculiar Nature of Jacobitism in the Highlands 285 Jealousy of the Ascendency of the Campbells 288 The Stewarts and Macnaghtens ; The Macleans 290 The Camerons ; Lochiel 291 The Macdonalds 294 Feud between the Macdonalds and Mackintoshes; Inverness.. 294 Inverness threatened by Macdonald of Keppoch 296 Dundee appears in Keppoch's Camp 227 CONTENTS. 9 PAGE. Insurrection of the Clans hostile to the Campbells 300 Tarbet's Advice to the Government 302 Indecisive Campaign in the Highlands 303 Military Character of the Highlanders 304 Quarrels in the Highland Army 309 Dundee applies to James for assistance ; The War in the Highlands suspended 311 Scruples of the Covenanters about taking Arms for King William 312 The Cameronian Regiment raised 313 Edinburgh Castle surrenders 314 Session of Parliament at Edinburgh ; Ascendency of the Club 315 Troubles in Athol 319 The war breaks out again in the Highlands 321 Death of Dundee 328 Retreat of Mackay 329 Effect of the battle of Killiecraukie ; The Scottish Parliament adjourned 331 The Highland Army reinforced 334 Skirmish at Saint Johnston's 338 Disorders in the Highland Army 337 Mackay's Advice disregarded by the Scotch Ministers ; The Cameronians stationed at Dunkeld 338 The Highlanders attack the Cameronians and are repulsed 339 Dissolution of the Highland Army 341 Intrigues of the Club ; State of the Lowlands 342 CHAPTER XIV. Disputes in the English Parliament ; The Attainder of Russell reversed 343 Other Attainders reversed ; Case of Samuel Johnson 346 Case of Devonshire ; Case of Gates 347 Bill of Rights 355 Disputes about a Bill of Indemnity 358 Last Days of Jeffreys 360 The Whigs dissatisfied with the King 364 Intemperance of Howe ; Attack on Caermarthen 366 Attack on Halifax 367 /^Preparations for a Campaign in Ireland 371 10 CONTENTS. PAGE. Schomberg 372 Recess of the Parliament ; State of Ireland ; Advice of Avaux 374 Dismission of Melfort ; Schomberg lands in Ulster 378 Carrickf ergus taken ; Schomberg advances into Leinster 379 The English and Irish Armies encamp near each other ; Schomberg declines a Battle 381 Frauds of the English Commissariat 382 Conspiracy among the French Troops in the English Service 383 Pestilence in the English Army 384 The English and Irish Armies go into Winter Quarters 387 Various Opinions about Schomberg's Conduct 388 Maritime Affairs 389 Maladministration of Torrington 390 Continental Affairs 391 Skirmish at Walcourt ; Imputations thrown on Marlborough . 393 Pope Innocent XL succeeded by Alexander VIII 395 The High Church Clergy divided on the Subject of the Oaths 393 Arguments for taking the Oaths 397 Arguments against taking the Oaths 400 A great Majority of the Clergy take the Oaths 405 The Non jurors : Ken 407 Leslie ; Sherlock 409 Hickes 411 Collier 412 Dodwell / 414 Kettlewell; Fitzwilliam ; General Character of the Nonjuring Clergy 416 The Plan of Comprehension ; Tillotson 420 An Ecclesiastical Commission issued 421 Proceedings of the Commission 423 The Convocation of the Province of Canterbury summoned ; Temper of the Clergy 427 The Clergy ill-affected towards the King 428 The Clergy exasperated against the Dissenters by the Pro- ceedings of the Scotch Presbyterians 431 Constitution of the Convocation 433 Election of Members of Convocation 434 Ecclesiastical Preferments bestowed 435 Compton discontented 437 The Convocation meets 438 CONTENTS. 11 PAGE The High Churchmen a Majority of the Lower House of Con- vocation 439 ' Difference between the Two Houses of Convocation 441 The Lower House of Convocation proves unmanageable 442 The Convocation prorogued 443 CHAPTER XV. The Parliament meets ; Retirement of Halifax 445 Supplies voted ; the Bill of Rights passed 446 Enquiry into Xaval Abuses 448 Enquiry into the Conduct of the Irish War 449 JReception of Walker in England 451 Edmund Ludlow 453 Violence of the Whigs 456 Impeachments 457 Committee of Murder 458 Malevolence of John Hampden 459 1690. The Corporation Bill 462 Debates on the Indemnity Bill 468 Case of Sir Robert Sawyer 469 The King purposes to retire to Holland 473 He is induced to change his intention ; the Whigs oppose his going to Ireland ; He prorogues the Parliament 474 Joy of the Tories : 476 Dissolution and General Election 478 Changes in the Executive Departments 480 Caermarthen then Chief Minister 481 Sir John Lowther 483 Rise and Progress of Parliamentary Corruption in England. , 484 Sir John Trevor 489 Godolphin retires 490 Changes at the Admiralty 491 Changes in the Commissions of Lieutenancy 492 Temper of the Whigs ; Dealings of some Whigs with Saint Germains ; Shrewsbury ; Ferguson 494 Hopes of the Jacobites 496 Meeting of the New Parliament ; Settlement of the Revenue. 497 Provision for the Princess of Denmark 500 Bill declaring the Acts of the preceding Parliament valid. . . . 507 12 CONTENTS. PAGE. Debate on the Changes in the Lieutenancy of London 508 Abjuration Bill 509 Act of Grace 514 The Parliament prorogued; Preparations for the First War. 517 Administration of James at Dublin 518 An Auxiliary Force sent from France to Ireland 520 i D lan of the English Jacobites: Clarendon, Ailesbury, Dart- mouth 523 Penn 524 Preston 525 The Jacobites betrayed by Fuller 526 Crone arrested 527 Difficulties of William 529 Conduct of Shrewsbury 530 The Council of Nine 533 Conduct of Clarendon ; Penn held to bail 534 Interview between William and Burnet ; William sets out for Ireland 535 Trial of Crone 536 Danger of Invasion and Insurrection ; Tourville's Fleet in the Channel 538 Arrests of suspected Persons 539 Torrington ordered to give Battle to Tourville 540 Battle of Beachy Head 542 Alarm in London ; Battle of Fleurus ; Spirit of the Nation . . 543 Conduct of Shrewsbury 546 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. CHAPTER XL THE Revolution had been accomplished. The decrees of the Convention were everywhere received with submission. London, true during fifty eventful years to the cause of civil freedom and of the reformed religion, was foremost in professing loyalty to the new Sovereigns. Garter King at Arms, after making proc- lamation under the windows of Whitehall, rode in state along the Strand to Temple Bar. He was followed by the maces of the two Houses, by the two Speakers, Halifax and Powle, and by a long train of coaches filled with noblemen and gentlemen. The magistrates of the City threw open their gates and joined the procession. Four regiments of militia lined the way up Ludgate Hill, round Saint Paul's Cathedral, and along Cheap- side. The streets, the balconies, and the very housetops were crowded with gazers. All the steeples from the Abbey to the Tower sent forth a joyous din. The proclamation was repeated with sound of trumpet, in front of the Royal Exchange, amidst the shouts of the citizens. In the evening every window from Whitechapel to Pic- cadilly was lighted up. The state rooms of the palace were thrown open, and were filled by a gorgeous company of courtiers desirous to kiss the hands of the King and Queen. The Whigs assembled there," flushed with victory and prosperity. There were among them some who might be pardoned if a vindictive feeling mingled with their joy. The most deeply injured of all who had survived the evil times was absent. Lady Russell, while her VOL. III. 1 13 14 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. friends were crowding the galleries of "Whitehall, remained in her retreat, thinking of one who, if he had been still living, would have held no undistinguished place in the ceremonies of that great day. But her daughter who had a few months be- fore become the wife of Lord Cavendish, was presented to the royal pair by his mother the Countess of Devonshire. A letter is still extant in which the young lady described with great vi- vacity the roar of the populace, the blaze in the streets, the throng in the presence chamber, the beauty of Mary, and the expression which ennobled and softened the harsh features of William. But the most interesting passage is that in which the orphan girl avowed the stern delight with which she had wit- nessed the tardy punishment of her father's murderer.* The example of London was followed by the provincial towns. During three weeks the Gazettes were filled with ac- counts of the solemnities by which the public joy manifested itsslf, cavalcades of gentlemen and yeomen, processions of Sheriffs and Bailiffs in scarlet gowns, musters of zealous Pro- testants with orange flags and ribands, salutes, bonfires, illumin- ations, music, balls, dinners, gutters running with ale, and con- duits spouting claret, f Still more cordial was the rejoicing among the Dutch, when they learned that the first minister of their Commonwealth had been raised to a throne. On the very day of his accession he had written to assure the States General that the change in his situation had made no change in the affection which he bore to his native land, and that his new dignity would, he hoped, enable him to discharge his old duties more efficiently than ever. That oligarchical party, which had always been hostile to the doc- trines of Calvin and to the House of Orange, muttered faintly that His Majesty ought to resign the Stadtholdership. But all such mutterings were drowned by the acclamations of a people * Letter from Lady Cavendish to Sylvia. Lady Cavendish, like most of the clever girls of that generation, had Scudery's romances in her head. She is Dorinda: her correspondent, supposed to be her cousin Jane Allington, is Sylvia : William is Ormanzor, and Mary Phenixana. London Gazette, Feb. 14, 1688-9 ; Luttrell's Diary. + See the London Gazettes of February and March 1688-9, and Luttrell's Diary. WILLIAM AND MARY. 15 proud of the genius and success of their great countryman. A day of thanksgiving was appointed. In all the cities of the Seven Provinces the public joy manifested itself by festivities of which the expense was chiefly defrayed by voluntary gifts. Every class assisted. The poorest labourer could help to set up an arch of triumph, or to bring sedge to a bonfire. Even the ruined Huguenots of France could contribute the aid of their ingenuity. One art which they had carried with them into ban- ishment was the art of making fireworks ; and they now, in honor of the victorious champion of their faith, lighted up the canals of Amsterdam with showers of splendid constellations.* To superficial observers it might well seem that William was, at this time, one of the most enviable of human beings. He was in truth one of the most anxious and unhappy. He well knew that the difficulties of his task were only beginning. Already that dawn which had lately been so bright was over, cast ; and many signs portended a dark and stormy day. It was observed that two important classes took little or no part in the festivities by which, all over England, the inaugura- tion of the new government was celebrated. Very seldom could either a priest or a soldier be seen in the assemblages which gathered round the market crosses where the King and Queen were proclaimed. The professional pride both of the clergy and of the army had been deeply wounded. The doc- trine of nonresistance had been dear to the Anglican divines. It was their distinguishing badge. It was their favourite theme. If we are to judge by that portion of their oratory which has come down to us, they had preached about the duty of passive obedience at least as often and as zealously as about the Trinity or the Atonement.f Their attachment to their political creed had indeed been severely tried, and had, during a short time, wavered. But with the tyranny of James the bitter feeling * "Wagenaar, Ixi. He quotes the proceedings of the States of the 2nd of March, 1GS9. London Gazette, April ii, ;CSO ; Monthly Mercury for April, 1689. t " I may be positive," says a writer who had been educated at Westminster School, " where I heard one sermon of repentance, faith, and the renewing of tho Holy Ghost, I heard three of tho other ; and 'tis hard to say whether Jesus Christ or King Charles the First were oftener mentioned and magnified." Bis- set's Modern Fanatic, 1710. 16 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. X which that tyranny had excited among them had passed away. The parson of a parish was naturally unwilling to join in what Was really a triumph over those principles which, during twenty- eight years, his flock had heard him proclaim on every anniver- sary of the Martyrdom and on every anniversary of the Restora- tion. The soldiers, too, were discontented. They hated Popery indeed ; and they had not loved the banished King. But they keenly felt that, in the short campaign which had decided the fate of their country, theirs had been an inglorious part. A regular army such as had never before marched to battle under the royal standard of England, had retreated precipitately be- fore an invader, and had then, without a struggle, submitted to him. That great force had been absolutely of no account in the late change, had done nothing towards keeping William out, and had done nothing towards bringing him in. The clowns, who, armed with pitchforks and mounted on carthorses, had straggled in the train of Lovelace or Delamere, had borne a greater part in the Revolution than those splendid household troops, whose plumed hats, embroidered coats, and curvetting chargers the Londoners had so often seen with admiration in Plyde Park. The mortification of the army was increased by the taunts of the foreigners, taunts which neither orders nor punishments could entirely restrain.* At several places the anger which a brave and highspirited body of men might, in such circumstances, be expected to feel, showed itself in an alarming manner. A battalion which lay at Cirencester put out the bonfires, huzzaed for King James, and drank confusion to his daughter and his nephew. The garrison of Plymouth disturbed the rejoicings of the County of Cornwall : blows were exchanged ; and a man was killed in the fray.f The ill humour of the clergy and of the army could not but be noticed by the most heedless ; for the clergy and the army were distinguished from other classes by obvious peculiarities of Paris Gazette, Ja "' 2fi ' 1689 ; Orange Gazette, London Jan. 10, 1688-9. t Grey's Debates, Howe's Speech, Feb. 26, 1688-9 ; Boscawen's Speech, March 1 ; Luttrell's Diary, Feb. 23-27. WILLIAM AND MARY. 17 garb. " Black coats and red coats," said a vehement Whig in the House of Commons, "are the curses of the nation."* But the discontent was not confined to the black coats and the red coats. The enthusiasm with which men of all classes had wel- comed William to London at Christmas had greatly abated be- fore the close of February. The new King had, at the very moment at which his fame and fortune reached the highest point, predicted the coming reaction. That reaction might, indeed have been predicted by a less sagacious observer of human af- fairs. For it is to be chiefly ascribed to a law as certain as the laws which regulate the succession of the seasons and the course of the trade winds. It is the nature of man to overrate present evil, and to underrate present good ; to long for what he has not, and to be dissatisfied with what he has. This propensity, as it appears in individuals, has often been noticed both by laughing and by weeping philosophers. It was a favourite theme of Horace and of Pascal, of Voltaire apd of Johnson. To its influence on the fate of great communities may be ascribed most of the revolu- tions and counterrevolutions recorded in history. A hundred generations have passed away since the first great national eman- cipation, of which an account has come down to us. We read in the most ancient of books that a people bowed to the dust under a cruel yoke, scourged to toil by hard taskmasters, not supplied with straw, yet compelled to furnish the daily tale of bricks, became sick of life, and raised such a cry of misery as pierced the heavens. The slaves were wonderfully set free : at the moment of their liberation they raised a song of gratitude and triumph : but, in a few hours, they began to regret their slavery, and to reproach the leader who had decoyed them away from the savoury fare of the house of bondage to the dreary waste which still separated them from the land flowing with milk and honey. Since that time the history of every great deliverer has been the history of Moses retold. Down to the present hour rejoicings like those on the shore of the Red Sea have ever been speedily followed by murmurings like those at the * Grey's Debates, Feb. 26. 1688-9. VOL. III. 2 18 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Waters of Strife.* The most just and salutary revolution must produce much suffering. The most just and salutary revolution cannot produce all the good that had been expected from it by men of uninstructed minds and sanguine tempers. Even the wisest cannot, while it is still recent, weigh quite fairly the evils which it has caused against the evils which it has removed. For the evils which it has caused are felt ; and the evils which it has removed are felt no longer. Thus it was now in England. The public was, as it always is during the cold fits which follow its hot fits, sullen, hard to please, dissatisfied with itself, dissatisfied with those who had lately been its favourites. The truce between the two great parties was at an end. Separated by the memory of all that had been done and suffered during a conflict of half a century, they had been, during a few months, united by a common dan- ger. But the danger was over : the union was dissolved ; and the old animosity broke forth again in all its strength. James had, during the last year of his reign, been even more hated by the Tories than by the Whigs ; and not without cause : for to the Whigs he was only an enemy ; and to the Tories he had been a faithless and thankless friend. But the old Royalist feeling, which had seemed to be extinct in the time of his lawless domination, had been partially revived by his misfortunes. Many lords and gentlemen who had, in De- cember, taken arms for the Prince of Orange and a Free Par- liament, muttered two months later, that they had been drawn in ; that they had trusted too much to His Highness's Declara- tion ; that they had given him credit for a disinterestedness which it now appeared was not in his nature. They had meant to put on King James, for his own good, some gentle force, to punish the Jesuits and renegades who had misled him, to ob- tain from him some guarantee for the safety of the civil and ecclesiastical institutions of the realm, but not to uncrown and This illustration is repeated to satiety in sermons and pamphlets of the time of William the Third. There is a poor imitation of Absalom and Ahitophel entitled the Murmurers. William is Moses ; Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, non- juring Bishops ; Balaam, I think, Dryden ; and Phinehas Shrewsbury. WILLIAM AND MART. 19 banish him. For his maladministration, gross as it had been, excuses were found. Was it strange that, driven from his na- tive land, while still a boy, by rebels who were a disgrace to the Protestant name, and forced to pass his youth in countries where the Roman Catholic religion was established, he should have been captivated by tha most attractive of alf supersti- tions ? Was it strange that, persecuted and calumniated as he had been by an implacable faction, his disposition should have become sterner and more severe than it had once been thought, and that, when those who had tried to blast his honour and to rob him of his birthright were at length in his power, he should not have sufficiently tempered justice with mercy ? As to the worst charge which had been brought against him, the charge of trying to cheat his daughters out of their inheritance by fathering a supposititious child, on what grounds did it rest ? Merely on slight circumstances, such as might well be imputed to accident, or to that imprudence which was but too much in harmony with his character. Did ever the most stupid country justice put a boy in the stocks without requiring stronger evi- dence than that on which the English people had pronounced their King guilty of the basest and most odious of all frauds ? Some great faults he had doubtless committed : nothing could be more just or constitutional than that for those faults his ad- visers and tools should be called to a severe reckoning ; nor did any of those advisers and tools more richly deserve punish- ment than the Roundhead sectaries whose adulation had en- couraged him to persist in the fatal exercise of the dispensing power. It was a fundamental principle of law that the King could do no wrong, and that, if wrong were done by his author- ity, his counsellors and agents were responsible. That great rule, essential to our polity, was now inverted. The sycophants, who were legally punishable, enjoyed impunity : the King, who was not legally punishable, was punished with merciless severity. Was it possible for the Cavaliers of England, the sons of the warriors who had fought under Rupert, not to feel bitter sorrow and indignation when they reflected on the fate of their rightful liege lord the heir of along line of orinces, lately 20 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. enthroned in splendour at Whitehall, now an exile, a suppliant, a mendicant ? His calamities had been greater than even those of the Blessed Martyr from whom he sprang. The father had been slain by avowed and deadly foes : the ruin of the son had been the work of his own children. Surely the punishment, even if deserved, should have been inflicted by other hands. And was it altogether deserved ? Had not the unhappy man been rather weak and rash than wicked ? Had he not some of the qualities of an excellent prince ? His abilities were cer- tainly not of a high order : but he was diligent : he was thrifty : he had fought bravely : he had been his own minister for mari- time affairs, and had, in that capacity acquitted himself respect- ably : he had, till his spiritual guides obtained a fatal ascend- ency over his mind, been regarded as a man of strict justice ; and, to the last, when he was not misled by them, he generally spoke truth and dealt fairly. With so many virtues he might, if he had been a Protestant, nay, if he had been a moderate Roman Catholic, have had a prosperous and glorious reign. Perhaps it might not be too late for him to retrieve his errors. It was difficult to believe that he could be so dull and perverse as not to have profited by the! terrible discipline which he had recently undergone ; and, if that discipline h;td produced the effects which might reasonably be expected from it, England might still enjoy, under her legitimate ruler, a larger measure of happiness and tranquillity than she could expect from the administration of the best and ablest usurper. We should do great injustice to those who held this lan- guage, if we supposed that they had, as a body, ceased to regard Popery and despotism with abhorrence. Some zealots might indeed be found who could not bear the thought of imposing conditions on their King, and who were ready to recall him without the smallest assurance that the Declaration of In- dulgence should not be instantly republished, that the High Commission should not be instantly revived, that Petre should not be again seated at the Council Board, and that the Fellows of Magdalene should not again be ejected. But the number of these men was small. On the other hand, the number of those WILLIAM AND MARY. 21 Royalists, who, if James would have acknowledged his mistakes and promised to observe the laws, were ready to rally round him, was very largo. It is a remarkable fact that two able and experienced statesmen, who had borne a chief part in the Revolution, frankly acknowledged, a few days after the Revolu- tion had been accomplished, their apprehension that a Restora- tion was close at hand. "If King James were a Protestant," said Halifax to Reresby, " we could not keep him out four months." " If King James," said Danby to Reresby about the same time, " would but give the country some satisfaction about religion, which he might easily do, it would be very hard to make head against him." * Happily for England, .J^iines was, as usual, his own worst enemy. No word indicating that he took blame to himself on" account of the past, or that he intended to govern constitutionally for the future, could be extracted from him. Every letter, every rumour, that found its way from Saint Germains to England made men of sense fear that, if, in his present temper, he should be restored to power, the second tyranny would be worse than the first. Thus the Tories, as a body, were forced to admit very unwillingly, that there was, at that moment, no choice but between William and public ruin. They therefore, without altogether relinquishing the hope that he who was King by right might at some future time be dis- posed to listen to reason, and without feeling anything like loyalty towards him who was King in possession, discontentedly endured the new government. It may be doubted whether that government was not, during the first months of its existence, in more danger from the affection of the Whigs than from the disaffection of the Tories. Enmity can hardly be more annoying than querulous, jealous, exacting fondness ; and such was the fondness which the Whigs felt for the Sovereign of their choice. They were loud in his praise. They were ready to support him with purse and sword against foreign and domestic foes. But their attachment to him was of a peculiar kind. Loyalty such as had animated the gallant gentlemen who had fought for Charles the First, loyalty such * Keresby's Memoirs- 22 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. as had rescued Charles the Second from the fearful dangers and difficulties caused by twenty years of maladministration, was not a sentiment to which the doctrines of Milton and Sidney were favourable : nor was it a sentiment which a prince, just raised to power by a rebellion, could hope to inspire. The Whig theory of government is that kings exist for the people, and not the people for kings ; that the right of a king is di- vine in no other sense than that in which the right of a mem- ber of parliament, of a judge, of a juryman, of a mayor, of a headborough, is divine ; that while the chief magistrate governs according to law, he ought to be obeyed and reverenced ; that, when he violates the law, he ought to be withstood ; and that, when he violates the law grossly, systematically, and pertina- ciously, he ought to be deposed. On the truth of these princi- ples depended the justice of William's title to the throne. It is obvious that the relation between subjects who held these princi- ples, and a ruler whose accession had been the triumph of these principles, must have been altogether different from the rela- tion which had subsisted between the Stniarts and the Cavaliers. The Whigs loved William indeed : but they loved him, not as a king, but as a party leader ; and it was not difficult to foresee that their enthusiasm would cool fast if he should refuse to be the mere leader of their party, and should attempt to be king of the whole nation. What they expected from him in return for their devotion to his cause was that he should be one of themselves, a stanch and ardent Whig ; that he should show favour to none but Whigs ; that he should make all the old grudges of the Whigs his own ; and there was but too much reason to apprehend that, if he disappointed this expectation, the only section of the community which was zealous in his cause would be estranged from him.* Such were the difficulties by which at the moment of his * Here, and in many other places, I abstain from citing authorities, because my authorities are too numerous to cite. My notions of the temper arid relative position of political and religious parties in the reign of William the Third, have been derived, not from any single work, but from thousands of forgotten tracts, sermons, and satires ; in fact, from a whole literature which is mouldering in old libraries. WILLIAM AND MARY. 23 elevation, he found himself beset. Where there was a good path he had seldom failed to choose it. But now he had only a choice among paths every one of which seemed likely to lead to destruction. From one faction he could hope for no cordial support. The cordial support of the other faction he could re. tain only by becoming the most factious man in his kingdom, a Shaftesbury on the throne. If he persecuted the Tories, their sulkiness would infallibly be turned into fu y. If he showed favour to the Tories, it was by no means certain that he would gain their goodwill ; and it was but too probable that he might lose his hold on the hearts of the Whigs. Something however he must do : something he must risk : a Privy Council must be sworn in : all the great offices, political and judicial, must be tilled. It was impossible to make an arrangement that would please everybody, and difficult to make an arrangement that would please anybody : but an arrangement must be made. What is now called a ministry he did not think of forming. Indeed what is now called a ministry was never known in Eng- land till he had been some years on the throne. Under the Plantagenets, the Tudors, and the Stuarts, there had been min- isters : but there had been no ministry. The servants of the Crown were not, as now, bound in frankpledge for each other. They were not expected to be of the same opinion even on questions of the gravest importance. Often they were politically and personally hostile to each other, and made no secret of their hostility. It was not yet felt to be inconvenient or unseemly that they should accuse each other of high crimes, and demand each other's heads. No man had been more active in the im- peachment of the Lord Chancellor Clarendon than Coventry, who was a Commisioner of the Treasury. No man had been more active in the impeachment of the Lord Treasurer Danby than Winnington, who was Solicitor General. Among the mem- bers of the Government there was only one point of union, their common head, the Sovereign. The nation considered him as the proper chief of the administration, and blamed him severely if he delegated his high functions to any subject. Clarendon has told us that nothing was so hateful to the Englishmen of his 24 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. time as a Prime Minister. They would rather, he said, be sub- ject to an usurper like Oliver, who was first magistrate in fact as well as in name, than to a legitimate King who referred them to a Grand Vizier. One of the chief accusations which the country party had brought against Charles the Second was that he was too indolent and too fond of pleasure to examine with care the balance sheets of public accountants and the inventories of military stores. James, when he came to the crown, had determined to appoint no Lord High Admiral or Board of Admiralty, and to keep the entire direction of mari- time affairs in his own hands ; and this arrangement, which would now be thought by men ,of all parties unconstitutional and per- nicious in the highest degree, was then generally applauded even by people who were not inclined to see his conduct in a favour- able light. How completely the relation in which the King stood to his Parliament and to his ministers had been altered by the Revolution was not at first understood even by the most en- lightened statesmen. It was universally supposed that the gov- ernment would, as in time past, be conducted by functionaries independent of each other, and that William would exercise a general superintendence over them all. It was also fully ex- pected that a prince of William's capacity and experience would transact much important business without having recourse to any adviser. There were therefore no complaints when it was understood that he had reserved to himself the direction of foreign affairs. This was indeed scarcely matter of choice : for, with the single exception of Sir William Temple, whom nothing would induce to quit his retreat for public life, there was no Englishman who had proved himself capable of conducting an important ne- gotiation with foreign powers to a successful and honourable issue. Many years had elapsed since England had interfered with weight and dignity in the affairs of the great commonwealth of nations. The attention of the ablest English politicians h J long been almost exclusively occupied by disputes con ning the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of their own country. The contests about the Popish Plot and the Exclusion Bill, the WILLIAM AND MARY. 25 Habeas Corpus Act and the Test Act, had produced an abun- dance, indeed a glut, of those talents which raise men to emi nence in societies torn by internal factions. All the Continent could not show such skilful and wary leaders of parties, such dexterous parliamentary tacticians, such ready and eloquent de- baters, as were assembled at Westminster. But a very different training was necessary to form a great minister for foreign af- fairs ; and the Revolution had on a sudden placed England in a situation in which the services of a great minister for foreign affairs were indispensable to her. William was admirably qualified to supply that in which the most accomplished statesmen of his kingdom were deficient. He had long been preeminently distinguished as a negotiator. He was the author and the soul of the European coalition against the French ascendency. The clue, without which it was perilous to enter the vast and intricate maze of Continental politics, was in his hands. His English counsellors, therefore, however able and active, seldom, during his reign, ventured to meddle with that part of the public business which he had taken, as his peculiar province.* The internal government of England could be carried on ojily by the advice and agency of English ministers. Those ministers Wimam selected in such a manner as showed that he was determined not to proscribe any set of men who were willing to support his throne. On the day after the crown had been presented to him in the Banqueting House, the Privy Council was sworn in. Most of the Councillors were Whigs : but the names of several eminent Tories appeared in the list-t The four highest offices in the state were assigned to four noble- men, the representatives of four classes of politicians. In practical ability and official experience Danby had no superior among his contemporaries. To the gratitude of the new Sovereigns he had a strong claim ; for it was by his dex- * The following passage in a tiact of that time expresses the general opinion. "He has better knowledge of foreign affairs than we have ; but in Knelish bus- iness it is no dishonour to him to be told his relation to us, the nature of it, and what is fit for him to do." An Honest Commoner's Speech. t London Gazette, Feb. 18, 16S8-9. 26 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. terity that their marriage had been brought about in spite of difficulties which had seemed insuperable. The enmity which he had always borne to France was a scarcely less powerful recommendation. He had signed the invitation of the thirtieth of June, had excited and directed the Northern insurrection, and had, in the Convention, exerted all his influence and elo- quence in opposition to the scheme of Regency. Yet the Whigs regarded him with unconquerable distrust and aversion. They could not forget that he had, in evil days, been the first minister of the state, the head of the Cavaliers, the champion of preroga- tive, the persecutor of dissenters. Even in becoming a rebel, he had not ceased to be a Tory. If he had drawn the sword against the crown, he had drawn it only in defence of the Church. If he had, in the Convention, done good by opposing the scheme of Regency, he had done harm by obstinately maintaining that the throne was not vacant, and that the Estates had no right to determine who should fill it. The Whigs were therefore of opinion that he ought to think himself ampty rewarded for his recent merits by being suffered to escape the punishment of those offences for which he had been impeached ten years before. He, on the other hand, estimated his own abilities and services, which were doubtless considerable, at their full value, and thought himself entitled to the great place of Lord High Treas- urer, which he had formerly held. But he was disappointed. William, on principle, thought it desirable to divide the power and patronage of the Treasury among several Commissioners. He was the first English King who never, from the beginning to the end of his reign, trusted the white staff in the hands of a single subject. Danby was offered his choice between the Presidency of the Council and a Secretaryship of State. He sullenly accepted the Presidency, and while the Whigs mur- mured at seeing him placed so high, hardly attempted to con- ceal his anger at not having been placed higher.* Halifax, the most illustrious man of that small party which boasted that it kept the balance even between Whigs and Tories, took charge of the Privy Seal, and continued to be London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9 ; Sir J. Beresby's Memoirs. WILLIAM AND MARY. 27 Speaker of the House of Lords.* He had been foremost in strictly legal opposition to the late Government, and had spoken and written with great ability against the dispensing power: but he had refused to know any thing about the design of in- vasion : he had laboured, even when the Dutch were in full march towards London, to effect a reconcilation ; and he had never deserted James till James had deserted the throne. But, from the moment of that shameful flight, the sagacious Trim- mer, convinced that compromise was thenceforth impossible, had taken a decided part. He had distinguished himself preemi- nently in the Convention ; nor was it without a peculiar propriety that he had been appointed to the honourable office of tender- ing the crown, in the name of all the Estates of England, to the Prince and Princess of Orange : for our Revolution, as far as it can be said to bear the character of any single mind, assuredly bears the character of the large yet cautious mind of Plalifax. The Whigs, however, were not in a temper to accept a recent service as an atonement for an old offence ; and the offence of Halifax had been grave indeed. He had long before been conspicuous in their front rank during a hard fight for liberty. When they were at length victorious, when it seemed that Whitehall was at their mercy, when they had a near prospect of dominion and revenge, he had changed sides ; and fortune had changed sides with him. In the great debate on the Exclusion Bill, his eloquence had struck the Opposition dumb, and had put new life into the inert and desponding party of the Court. It was true, that, though he had left his old friends in the day of their insolent prosperity, he had returned to them in the day of their distress. But, now that their dis- tress was over, they forgot that he had returned to them, and remembered only that he had left them.f The vexation with which they saw Danby presiding in the Council, and Halifax bearing the Privy Seal, was not dimin- ished by the news that Nottingham was appointed Secretary of State. Some of those zealous churchiren who had never ceased to profess the doctrine of nonresistance, who thought the Rev- London Gazette, Feb. 18, 1688-9 ; Lords' Journals. t Burnet, ii. 4. 28 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. olution unjustifiable, who had voted for a Regency, and who had to the last maintained that the English throne could never be one moment vacant, yet conceived it to be their duty to sub- mit to the decision of the Convention. They htid not, they said, rebelled against James. They had not elected William. But, now that they saw on the throne a Sovereign whom they never would have placed there, they were of opinion that no law, divine or human, bound them to carry the contest further. They thought that they found, both in the Bible and in the Statute Book, directions which could not be misunderstood. The Bible enjoins obedience to the powers that be. The Stat- ute Book contains an Act providing that no subject shall be deemed a wrongdoer for adhering to the King in possession. On these grounds many, who had not concurred in setting up the new government, believed that they might give it their support without offence to God or man. One of the most eminent politicians of this school was Nottingham. At his instance the Convention had, before the throne was filled, made such changes in the oath of allegiance as enabled him and those who agreed with him to take that oath without scruple. " My principles," he said, " do not permit me to bear any part in making a King. But when a King has been, made, my prin- ciples bind me to pay him an obedience more strict than he can expect from those who have made him." He now, to the .sur- prise of some of those who most esteemed him. consented to sit in the council, and to accept the seals of Secretary. William doubtless hoped that this appointment would be considered by the clergy and the Tory country gentlemen as a sufficient guar- antee that no evil was meditated against the Church. Even Burnet, who at a later period felt a strong antipathy to Not- tingham, owned, in some memoirs written soon after the Rev- olution, that the King had judged well, and that the influence of the Tory Secretary, honestly exerted in support of the new Sovereigns, had saved England from great calamities.* * These memoirs will be found in a manuscript volume, which is part of the Harleian Collection, and is numbered G584. They are in fact, the first outlines of a great part of Buruet's .History of Ilia Own Times. The dates at which the WILLIAM AND MART. 29 The other secretary was Shrewsbury.* No man so young had within living memory occupied so high a post in the gov- ernment. He had but just completed his twenty -eighth year. Nobody, however, except the solemn formalists at the Spanish embassy, thought his youth an objection to his promotion.! He had already secured for himself a place in history by the con- spicuous part which he had taken in the deliverance of his coun- try. His talents, his accomplishments, his graceful manners, his bland temper, made him generally popular. By the Whigs especially he was almost adored. None suspected that, with many great and many amiable qualities, he had such faults both of head and of heart as would make the rest of a life which had opened under the fairest auspices burdensome to himself and almost useless to his country. The naval administration and the financial administration were confided to Boards. Herbert was First Commissioner of the Admiralty. He had in the late reign given up wealth and dignities when he had found that he could not retain them with honour and with a good conscience. He had carried the mem- orable invitation to the Hague. He had commanded the Dutch fleet during the voyage from Helvoetsluys to Torbay. His character for courage and orofessional skill stood high. That he had had his lollies and vices was well known. But his recent conduct in the time of severe trial had atoned for all, and seemed to warrant the hope that his future career would be glorious. Among the commissioners who sate with him at the different portions of this most curious and interesting book were composed are marked. Almost the whole was written before the death of Mary. Burnet did not begin to prepare his History of William's Reign for the press till ten years later. By that time his opinions, both of men and of things, had undergone con- siderable changes. The value of the rough draught is therefore very great : for it contains some facts which he afterwards thought it advisable to suppress, and some judgments which he afterwards saw cause to alter. I must own that I generally like his first thoughts best "Whenever his History is reprinted, it ought to be carefully collated with this volume. When I refer to the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584, 1 "wish the reader to understand that the MS. contains something which is not to be found in the History. As to Nottingham's appointment, see Burnet, ii. 8 ; the London Gazette of March 7, 1688-9 ; and Clarendon's Diary of Feb. 15, * London Gazette, Feb. 13, 1688-9. t Don Pedro do Ronquillo makes this objection. 30 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Admiralty were two distinguished members of the House of Com- mons, William Sacheverell, a veteran Whig, who had great au- thority in his party, and Sir John Lowther, an honest and very moderate Tory, who in fortune and parliamentary in- terest was among the first of the English gentry * Mordauut, one of the most vehement of the Whigs, was placed at the head of the Treasury ; why, it is difficult to say. His romantic courage, his flighty wit, his eccentric invention, his love of desperate risks and startling effects, were not qual- ities likely to be of much use to him in financial calculations and negotiations. Delamere, a more vehement Whig if possible, than Mordaunt, sate second at the board, and was Chancellor of the Exchequer. Two Whig members of the House of Commons were in the Commission, Sir lienry Capel, brother of the Earl of Essex who died by his own hand in the Tower, and Richard Hampden, son of the great leader of the Long Parliament. But the Commissioner on whom the chief weight of business lay was Godolphin. This man, taciturn, clearmind- ed, laborious, inoffensive, zealous for no government, and useful to every government, had gradually become an almost indis- pensable part of the machinery of the state. Though a church- man, he had prospered in a Court governed by Jesuits. Though he had voted for a Regency, he was the real head of a Treasury filled with Whigs. His abilities and knowledge, which had in in the late reign supplied the deficiencies of Bellasyse and Dover, were now needed to supply the deficiencies of Mordaunt and Delamere.f There were some difficulties in disposing of the Great Seal. The King at first wished to confide it to Nottingham, whose father had borne it during several years with high reputation. $ Nottingham, however, declined the trust ; and it was offered to Halifax, but was again declined. Both these lords doubtless * London Gazette, March 11, 1C88-9. t Ibid. t I have followed what seems to me the most probable story. But U has been doubted whether Nottingham was invited to be Chancellor, or only to bo First Commissioner of the Great Seal. Compare Burnet, ii. I', and Boyer's History of William, 1702. Narcissua Liittrcll repeatedly, and even as late as the close of 1692. speaks of Nottingham as likely to be Chancellor. WILLIAM AND MART. 31 felt that it was a trust which they could not discharge with hon- our to themselves or with advantage to the public. In old times, indeed, the Seal had been generally held by persons who were not lawyers. Even in the seventeenth century it had been confided to two eminent men who had never studied at any Inn of Court. Williams had been Lord Keeper to James the First. Shaftesbury had been Lord Chancellor to Charles the Second. But such appointments could no longer be made without serious inconvenience. Equity had been gradually shaping itself into a refined science, which no human faculties could master without long and intense application. Even Shaftesbury, vigorous as was his intellect, had painfully felt his want of technical knowledge ; * and, during the fifteen years which had Elapsed since Shaftesbury had resigned the Seal, technical knowledge had constantly been becoming more and more necessary to his successors. Neither Nottingham, there- fore, though he had a stock of legal learning such as is rarely found in any person who had not received a legal education, nor Halifax, though in the judicial sittings of the House of Lords, the quickness of his apprehension, and the subtlety of his reason- ing had often astonished the bar, ventured to accept the highest office which an English layman can fill. After some delay the Seal was confided to a commission of eminent lawyers, with Maynard at their head.f The choice of Judges did honour to the new government. Every privy Councillor was directed to bring a list. The lists were compared ; and twelve men of conspicuous merit were selected. f The professional attainments and Whig principles of Pollexfen gave him pretensions to the highest place. But it was remembered that he had held briefs for the Crown, in the Western counties, at the assizes which followed the battle of Sedgemoor. It seems indeed from the reports of the trials, that he did as little as he could do if he held the briefs at all, and that he left to the Judges the business of browbeating witnesses and prisoners. Nevertheless his name was inseparably associated * Roger North relates an amusing story about Shaftesbury's embarrassment. t London Gazette, March 4 16S8-9. t Burnet, ii. 5. 32 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. in the public mind with the Bloody Circuit. He, therefore, could not with propriety be put at the head of the first criminal court in the realm. * After acting during a few weeks ass Attorney General, he was made Chief Justice of the Common Pleas. Sir John Holt, a young man, but distinguished by learn- ing, integrity, and courage, became Chief Justice of the King's Bench. Sir Robert Atkyns, an eminent lawyer who had passed some years in rural retirement, but whose reputation was still great in Westminster Hall, was appointed Chief Baron. Powell who had been disgraced on account of his honest declaration iu favour of the Bishops, again took his seat among the Judges. Treby succeeded Pollexfen as Attorney General ; and Somers was made Solicitor.! Two of the chief places in the Royal household were filled by two English noblemen eminently qualified to adorn a court. The high spirited anil accomplished Devonshire was named Lord Steward. No man had done more or risked more for England during the crisis of her fate. In retrieving her liberties he had retrieved also the fortunes of his own house. His bond for thirty thousand pounds was found among the papers which James had left at Whitehall, and was cancelled by William. J Dorset became Lord Chamberlain, and employed the influence and patronage annexed to his functions, as he had long employed his private means, in encouraging genius and in alleviating mis- fortune. One of the first acts which he was under the neces- sity of performing must have been painful to a man of so generous a nature, and of so keen a relish for whatever was ex- cellent in arts and letters. Dryden could no longer remain Poet Laureate. The public would not have borne to see any Papist among the servants of Their Majesties ; and Dryden was not only a Papist, but an apostate. He had moreover aggravated the guilt of his apostasy by calumniating and ridiculing the church which he had deserted. He had, it was facetiously said, * The Protestant Mask taken off from the Jeauited Englishman, 1692- t These appointments were not announced in the Gazette till the 6th of May ; but some of them were made earlier. t Kennet's Funeral Sermon on the first Duke of Devonshire, and Memoirs of the family of Cavendish, 1708. WILLIAM AND MAET. 33 treated her as the Pagan persecutors of old treated her children. He had dressed her up in the skin of a wild beast, and then baited her for the public amusement.* He was removed ; but he received from the private bounty of the magnificent Cham- berlain a pension equal to the salary which had been withdrawn. The deposed Laureate, however, as poor of spirit as rich in intellectual gifts, continued, to complain piteously, year after year, of the losses which he had not suffered, till at length his wailings drew forth expressions of well merited contempt fiom brave and honest Jacobites, who had sacrificed everything to their principles without deigning to utter one word of depreca- tion or lamentation. f In the Royal household were placed some of those Dutch nobles who stood highest in the favour of the King. Bentinck had the great office of Groom of the Stole, with a salary of five thousand pounds a year. Zulestein took charge of the robes. The Master of the Horse was Auverquerque, a gallant soldier, who united the blood of Nassau to the blood of Horn, and who wore with just pride a costly sword presented to him by the States General in acknowledgment of the courage with which he had, on the bloody day of Saint Dennis, saved the life of William. The place of Vice Chamberlain to the Queen was given to a man who had just become conspicuous in public life, and whose * See a poem entitled, A Votive Tablet to the King and Queen, t See Prior's Dedication of his Poems to Dorset's son and successor, and Dryden's Essay on Satire prefixed to the translations from Juvenal. There is a bitter sneer on Dryden's effeminate querulousness in Collier's Short View of the State. In Blackmore's Prince Arthur, a poem which, worthless as it is, contains some curious allusions to contemporary men and events, are the following lines : The poets' nation did obsequious wait For the kind dole divided at his gate. Lauras among the menres. ' J'ai mal pris ma bisque,' dit-il ; 'j'ai cru faire 1'agreable sur le chapitre de Milord. . . mais j'ai trouv6 ;i qui parler, et j'ai attrape un regard du roi qui m'a fait passer 1'envie de rire.' " Dohna supposed that William might be less sensitive about the character of a Frenchman, and tried the experiment. But, says he, " j'eus a peu pres le mSme sort que M. de la Foret." "WILLIAM AND MARY. 59 respected her name. God, she said, knew where her weakness lay. Siie was too sensitive to abuse and calumny : He had mercifully spared her a trial which was beyond her strength; and the best return which she could make to Him was to dis- countenance all malicious reflections on the characters of others. Assured that she possessed her husband's entire confidence and affection, she turned the edge of his sharp speeches sometimes by soft and sometimes by playful answers, and employed all the influence which she derived from her many pleasing quali- ties to gain the hearts of the people for him.* If she had long continued to assemble round her the best society of London, it is probable that her kindness and courtesy would have done much to efface the unfavorable impression made by his stern and frigid demeanour. Unhappily his physi- cal infirmities made it impossible for him to reside at Whitehall. The air of Westminster, mingled with the fog of the river which in spring tides overflowed the. courts of his palacs, with the smoke of seacoal from two hundred thousand chimneys, and with the fumes of all the filth which was then suffered to accu- mulate in the streets, was insupportable to him ; for his lungs were weak, and his sense of smell exquisitely keen. His con- stitutional asthma made rapid progress. His physicians pro- nounced it impossible r!at he could live to the end of the year. His face was so ghastly that he could hardly be recognized. * Compare the account of Mary by the "Whig Burnet with the mention of her by the Tory Evelyn in his Diary, March 8, 16W-5, and with what is said of her by the Nonjuror who wrote the Letter to Archbishop Teuison on her death in 1695. The impression which the bhmtness and reserve of William and the grace and gentleness of Mary had made on the populace mav be traced in the rPTnains of the street poetry of that time. The following conjugal dialogue may still be seen on the original broadside. "Then bespoke Mary, our most royal Pn<>en. ' My gracious King William where arc rcvi piin; ?' He answered her quickly, ' I coun t him no man That telleth his secret unto a woman.* The Queen with a modest behaviour replied, I wish that kind Providence may be thy ffuide, To keep thee from danger, my sovereign Lord, The which will the greatest of comfort afford.' " These lines are in an excellent collection formed by Mr. Richard Heber. and now the property of Mr. Broderip, by whom it was kindly lent to m?. In one ol the mo*t savage Jacobite basquinades of 16S!>, William is described as " A churl to his wife which she makes but a jest." 60 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Those who had to transact business with him were shocked to hear him gasping for breath, and coughing till the tears ran down his cheeks.* His mind, strong as it was, sympathised with his bodj% His judgment was indeed as clear as ever. But there was, during some months, a perceptible relaxation of that energy by which he had been distinguished. Even his Dutch friends whispered that he was not the man that he had been at the Hague.f It was absolutely necessary that he should quit London. He accordingly took up his residence in the purer air of Hampton Court. That mansion, begun by the mag- nificent Wolsey, was a fine specimen of the architecture which flourished in England under the first Tudors : but the apart- ments were not, according to the notions of the seventeenth century, well fitted for purposes of state. Our princes there- fore had, since the Restoration, repaired thither seldom, and only when they wished to live for a time in retirement. As William proposed to make the deserted edifice his chief palace, it was necessary for him to build and to plant ; nor was the necessity disagreeable to him. -For he had, like most of his countrymen, a pleasure in decorating a country house ; and next to hunting, though at a great interval, his favourite amusements were architecture and gardening. He had already created on a sandy heath in Guelders a paradise, which attracted multitudes of the curious from Holland and Westphalia. Mary had laid the first stone of the house. Bentinck had superintended the digging of the fishponds. There were cascades and grottoes, a spacious orangery, and an aviary which furnished Hondekoeter with numerous specimens of manycoloured plumage.J The King, in his splendid banishment, pined for this favourite seat, * Burnet, ii. 2; Burnet, MS. Harl, 6584. But Ronquillo's account is much more circumstantial. " Nada se ha visto mas desfigurado ; y, quaiitas veces he estado con el, le he visto toser tanto que se le saltaban las lagrimas, y se ponia moxado y arrancando ; y confiesan los medicos que es una asma incurable." Mar. 8-18, 1689. Avaux wrote to the same effect from Ireland. "La saute de 1'usurpateur est fort mauvaise. L'on ne croit pas qu'il vive uai an." April 8-18. t Hasta decir los mismos Hollandeses que lo desconozcan," says RonquiUo. " II est absolument mal propre pour le r&le qu'il a a jouer a 1'heure qu'il est," tays Avaux. " Slothful and sickly," says Evelyn, March 29, 1689. t See Harris's description of Loo, 109&. WILLIAM AND MART. 61 and found some consolation in creating another Loo on the banks of the Thames. Soon a wide extent of ground was laid out in formal walks and parterres. Much idle ingenuity was employed in forming that intricate labyrinth of verdure which has puzzled and amused five generations of holiday visitors from London. Limes thirty years old were transplanted from neighbouring woods to shade the alleys. Artificial fountains spouted among the flower beds. A new court, not designed with the purest taste, but stately, spacious, and commodious, rose under the direction of Wren. The wainscots were adorned with the rich and delicate carvings of Gibbons. The staircases were in a blaze with the glaring frescoes of Verrio. In every corner of the mansion appeared a profusion of gewgaws, not yet familiar to English eyes. Mary had acquired at the Hague a taste for the porcelain of China, and amused herself by form- ing at Hampton a vast collection of hideous images, and of vases on which houses, trees, bridges, and mandarins, were depicted in outrageous defiance of all the laws of perspective. The fashion, a frivolous and inelegant fashion it must be owned, which was thus set by the amiable Queen, spread fast and wide. lu a few years almost every great house in the kingdom con- tained a museum of these grotesque baubles. Even statesmen and generals were not ashamed to be renowned as judges of teapots and dragons ; and satirists long continued to repeat that a fine lady valued her mottled green pottery quite as much as she valued her monkey, and much more than she valued her husband.* But the new palace was embellished with works of art of a very dLlerent kind. A gallery was erected for the cartoons of Raphael. Those great pictures, then and still the finest on our side of the Alps, had been preserved by Cromwell from the fate which befel most of the other masterpieces in the collection of Charles the First, but had been suffered to lie during many * Every person who is well acquainted with Pope and Addison will remember f.elr sarcasms ou this taste. Lady Mary "Wortley Montague took the other side. " Old China," she fays, " is below nobody's taste, since it has been the Duke of Argylc's, whose understanding has never been doubted cither by his friends or enemies." 62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. years nailed up in deal boxes. Peter, raising the cripple at the Beautiful Gate, and Paul, proclaiming the Unknown God to the philosophers of Athens, were now brought forth from obscurity to be contemplated by artists with admiration and despair. The expense of the works at Hampton was the subject of bitter com- plaint to many Tories, who had very gently blamed the bound- less profusion with which Charles the Second had built and re- built, furnished and refurnished, the dwelling of the Duchess of Portsmouth.* The expense, however, was not the chief cause of the discontent which William's change of residence excited. There was no longer a Court at Westminster. Whitehall, once the daily resort of the noble and the powerful, the beautiful and the gay, the place to which fops came to show their new per- uques, men of gallantry to exchange glances with fine ladies, politicians to push their fortunes, loungers to hear the news, country gentlemen to see the royal family, was now, in the bus- iest season of the year, when London was full, when Parliament was sitting, left desolate. A solitary sentinel paced the grass- grown pavement before that door which had once been too nar- row for the opposite streams of entering and departing courtiers. The services which the metropolis had rendered to the King were great and recent ; and it was thought that he might have requited those services better than by treating it as Lewis had treated Paris. Halifax ventured to hint this, but was silenced by a few words which admitted of no reply. " Do yon wish," said William psevishly, " to see me dead ? " f In a short time it was found that Hampton Court was too * As to the works at Hampton Court see Evelyn's Diary. July 16, 1680 ; the Tour through Great Britain, 1724 ; the British Apelles ; Horace Walpole on Modem Gardening ; Burnet, ii. 2, 3. When Evelyn was at Hampton Court. In IG'??, the cartoons were not to be seen. The triumphs of Andra Maiitegna were then supposed to be the liiiest pictures ic the palace. t Burnet, ii. 2 ; Reresby's Memoirs. Ronquillo wrote repeatedly to the same effect. For example. " Bien quisiera que el Key fuese mas comunirable. y se aoomodase uu poco mas al humor sociable de los Inarlases, y quo estubiera en Londrcs : pero es cierto que sus achaques no se lo permiten." July 8-18. 1080. Avaux, about the same time, wrote thus to Croissy f v om Ireland : " Le Prince d'Oranfp est toujours a Hampton Coiirt, et jamais a la ville : et le peuple est fort mal satisfait de cette maniere bizarre et retiree." WILLIAM AND MARY. 63 far from the Houses of Lords and Commons, and from the pub- lic offices, to be the ordinary abode of the Sovereign. Instead, however, of returning to Whitehall, William determined to have another dwelling, near enough to his capital for the transaction of business, but not near enough to be within that atmosphere in which he could not pass a night without risk of suffocation. At one time he thought of Holland House, the villa of the noble family of Rich ; and he actually resided there some weeks.* But he at length fixed his choice on Kensington House, the sub- urban residence of the Earl of Nottingham. __ The purchase was made for eighteen thousand guineas, and was followed by more building, more planting, more expense, and more discontent.f At present Kensington House is considered as a part of London. It was then a rural mansion, and could not, in those days of highwaymen and scourers, of roads deep in mire and nights with- out lamps, be the rallying point of fashionable society. It was well known that the King, who treated the English nobility and gentry so ungraciously, could, in a small circle of his own countrymen, be easy, friendly, even jovial, could pour out his feelings garrulously, could fill his glass, perhaps too o'- ten ; and this was, in the view of our forefathers, an aggrava- tion of his offences. Yet our forefathers should have had the sense and the justice to acknowledge that the patriotism, which they considered as a virtue in themselves, could not be a fault in him. It was unjust to blame him for not at once transfer- ring to our island the love which he bore to the country of his birth. If, in essentials, he did his duty towards England, he might well be suffered to feel at heart an affectionate preference for Holland. Nor is it a reproach to him that he did not, in the reason of his greatness, discard companions who had played with him in his childhood, who had stood by him firmly through all the vicissitudes of his youth and manhood, who had, in defiance of the most loathsome and deadly forms of infection, kept watch by his sick bed, who had, in the thickest of the battle, thrust themselves between him and the French swords, and whose at- * Several of his letters to Heinsius are dated from Holland House, t Luitrell's Diary ; Evelyn's Diary, Feb. 25, 1689, 1690. 64 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tachment was, not to the Stadtholder or to the King, but to plain William of Nassau. It may be added that his old friends could not but rise in his estimation by comparison with his new courtiers. To the end of his life all his Dutch com- rades, without exception, continued to deserve his confidence. They could be out of humour with him, it is true ; and, when out of humour, they could be sullen and rude ; but never did they, even when most angry and unreasonable, fail to keep his secrets and to watch over his interests with gentleman-like and soldier-like fidelity. . Among his English counsellors such fidel- ity was rare.* It is painful, but it is no more than just, to ac- knowledge that he had but too good reason for thinking meanly of our national character. That character was indeed, in essen- tials, what it has always been. Veracity, uprightness, and man- ly boldness were then, as now, qualities eminently English. But those qualities, though widely diffused among the great body of the people, were seldom to be found in the class with which William was best acquainted. The standard of honor and vir- tue among our public men was, during'his reign, at the very lowest point. His predecessors had bequeathed to him a court foul with all the vices of the Itestoration, a court swarming with sycophants, who were ready, on the first turn of fortune, to abandon him as they had abandoned his uncle. Here and there, lost in that ignoble crowd, was to be found a man of true inte- O rity and public spirit. Yet even such a man could not long live in such society without much risk that the strictness of his prin- ciples would be relaxed, and the delicacy of his sense of right and wrong impaired. It was surely unjust to blame a prince surrounded by flatterers and traitors for wishing to keep near * De Foe makes this excuse for William : We blame the King that he relies too much On strangers. Germans. Huguenots, and Dutch, And seldom docs his great affairs of state To English counsellors communicate. The fact might very well be answered thus He has too often been betrayed by us. He must have been a mad man to rely On English gentlemen's fidelity. The Foreigners have faithfully obeyed him, And none but Englishmen have e'er betrayed him." The True Born Englishman, Part H. WILLIAM AND MARY. 65 him four or five servants whom he knew by proof to be faithful ?ven to death. Nor was this the only instance in which our ancestors were unjust to him. They had expected that, as soon as so distin- guished a soldier and statesman was placed at the head of affairs, he would give some signal proof, they scarcely knew what, of genius and vigour. Unhappily, during the first months of his reign, almost everything went wrong. His subjects, bitterly disappointed, threw the blame on him, and began to doubt whether he merited that reputation which he had won at his first entrance into public life, and which the splendid suc- cess of his last great enterprise had raised to the highest point. Had they been in a temper to judge fairly, they would have perceived that for the maladministration of which they with good reason complained he was not responsible. He could as yet work only with the machinery which he had found ; and the machinery which he had found was all rust and rottenness. From the time of the Restoration to the time of the Revolution, neglect and fraud had been almost constantly impairing the efficiency of every department of the government. Honours and public trusts, peerages, baronetcies, regiments, frigates, embassies, governments, commissionerships, leases of crown lands, contracts for clothing, for provisions, for ammunition, pardons for murder, for robbery, for arson, were sold at White- hall scarcely less openly than asparagus at Covent Garden or herrings at Billingsgate. Brokers had been incessantly plying for custom in the purlieus of the court ; and of these brokers the most successful had been, in the days of Charles, the harlots, and in the days of James, the priests. From the palace, which was the chief seat of this pestilence, the taint had diffused itself through every office, and through every rank in every office, and had everywhere produced feebleness and disorganisation. So rapid was the progress of the decay, that within eight years after the time when Oliver had been the umpire of Europe, the roar of the guns of De Ruyter was heard in the Tower of.. London. The vices which had brought that great humiliation on the country had ever since been rooting themselves deeper . VOL. III. 5 66 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. and spreading themselves wider. James had, to do him justice, corrected a few of the gross abuses which disgraced the naval administration. Yet the naval administration, in spite of his attempts to reform it, moved the contempt of men who were acquainted with the dockyards of France and Holland. The military administration was still worse. The courtiers took bribes from the colonels : the colonels cheated the soldiers : the commissaries sent in long bills for what had never been fur- nished : the keepers of the magazines sold the public stores and pocketed the price. But these evils, though they had sprung into existence and grown to maturity under the government of Charles and James, first made themselves severely felt under the government of William. For Charles and James were con- tent to be the vassals and pensioners of a powerful and am- bitious neighbour : they submitted to his ascendency : they shunned with pusillanimous caution whatever could give him offence : and thus, at the cost of the independence and dignity of that ancient and glorious crown which they unworthily wore, they avoided a conflict which would instantly have shown how helpless, under their misrule, their once formidable kingdom had become. Their ignominious policy it was neither in Wil- liam's power nor in his nature to follow. It was only by arms that the liberty and religion of England could be protected against the mightiest enemy that had threatened our island since the Hebrides were strown with the wrecks of the Armada. The body politic, which, while it remained in repose, had presented a superficial appearance of health and vigour, was now under the necessity of straining every nerve in a wrestle for life or death, and was immediately found to be unequal to the exertion. The first efforts showed an utter relaxation of fibre, an utter want of training. Those efforts were, with scarcely an excep- tion, failures ; and every failure was popularly imputed, not to the rulers whose mismanagement had produced the infirmities of the state, but to the ruler in whose time the infirmities of the atate became visible. William might indeed, if he had been as absolute as Lewis, have used such sharp remedies as would speedily have restored WILLIAM AND MART. 67 to the English administration that firm tone which had been wanting since the death of Oliver. But the instantaneous re- O form of inveterate abuses was a task far beyond the powers of a prince strictly restrained by law, and restrained still more strictly by the difficulties of his situation.* Some of the most serious difficulties of his situation were caused by the conduct of the ministers on whom, new as he was to the details of English affairs, he was forced to rely for information about men and things. There was indeed no want of ability among his chief councillors : but one half of their ability was employed in counteracting the other half. Be- tween the Lord President and the Lord Privy Seal there was an inveterate enmity. f It had begun twelve years before when Danby was Lord High Treasurer, a persecutor of non- conformists, an uncompromising defender of prerogative, and when Halifax w:. rising to distinction as one of the most elo- quent leaders of the country party. In the reign of James, the two statesmen had found themselves in opposition together ; and their common hostility to France and to Rome, to the High Commission and to the dispensing power, had produced an ap- parent reconciliation ; but as soon as they were in office togeth- er the old antipathy revived. The hatred which the Whig party felt towards them both ought, it should seem, to have produced a close alliance between them : but in fact each of them saw with complacency the danger which threatened the other. Danby exerted himself to rally round him a strong phalanx of Tories. Under the plea of ill health, he withdrew from court, seldom came to the Council over which it was his duty to pre- side, passed much time in the country, and took scarcely any part in public affairs except by grumbling and sneering at all * Ronquillo had the good sense and justice to make allowances which the English did not make. After describing, in a despatch dated March 1-11, 1680, the lamentable state of the military and naval establishments, he says, "De esto no tiene culpa el Principe de Oranges ; porque pensar que se han de poder volver en dos ineses tres Reynos de abaxo arriba es nna extravagancia." Lord Pre- sident Stair, in a letter written from London about a month later, says thnt the delays of the English administration had lowered tlie King's reputation, "though without his fault." t liuruet, ii., 4 ; Ilerosby. 68 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. the acts of the government, and by doing jobs and getting places for his personal retainers.* In consequence of this defection, Halifax became prime minister, as far as any minister could, in that reign, be called prime minister. An immense load of business fell on him ; and that load he was unable to sustain. In wit and eloquence, in amplitude of comprehension and sub- tlety of disquisition, he had no equal among the statesmen of his time. But that very fertility, that very acuteness, which gave a singular charm to his conversation, to his oratory, and to his writings, unfitted him for the work of promptly deciding practical questions. He was slow from very quickness. For he saw so many arguments for and against every possible course that he was longer in making up his mind than a dull man would have been. Instead of acquiescing in his first thoughts, he repliedon himself, rejoined on himself, and surrejoined on himself. Those who heard him talk owned that he talked like an angel : but too often, when he had exhausted all that could be said, and came to act, the time for action was over. Meanwhile the two Secretaries of State were constantly labouring to draw their master in diametrically opposite directions. Every scheme, every person, recommended by one of them was reprobated by the other. Nottingham was never weary of repeating that the old Roundhead party, the party which had taken the life of Charles the First and had plotted against the life of Charles the Second, was in principle repub- lican, and that the Tories were the only true friends of mon- archy. Shrewsbury replied that the Tories might be friends of monarchy, but that they regarded James as their monarch. Nottingham was always bringing to the closet intelligence of the wild daydreams in which a few old eaters of calf's head, the remains of the once formidable party of Bradshaw and Ireton, still indulged at taverns in the City. Shrewsbury pro- duced ferocious lampoons which the Jacobites dropped every day in the coffeehouses. ' Every "\Vhig," said the Tory Sec- retary, " is an enemy of Your Majesty's prerogative." " Every * Reresby's Memoirs ; Bumet MS. Harl. 6584. WILLIAM AND MART. 69 Tory," said the "Whig Secretary, "is an enemy of Your Maj- esty's title."* At the Treasury there was a complication of jealousies and quarrels. f Both the First Commissioner, Mordaunt, and the Chancellor of the Exchequer, Delamere, were zealous Whigs but though they held the same political creed, their tempers differed widely. Mordaunt was volatile, dissipated and gen* erous. The wits of that time laughed at the way in which he flew about from Hampton Court to the Royal Exchange, and from the Royal Exchange back to Hampton Court. How he found time for dress, politics, lovemaking, and balladmaking Was a wonder. $ Delamere was gloomy and acrimonious, austere in his private morals, and punctual in his devotions, but greedy of ignoble gain. The two principal ministers of finance, therefore, became enemies, and agreed only in hating their colleague Godolphin. What business had he at White- hall in these days of Protestant ascendency, he who had sate at the same board with Papists, he who had never scrupled to attend Mary of Modena to the idolatrous worship of the Mass ? The most provoking circumstance was that Godolphiu, though his name stood only third in the commission, was really first Lord. For in financial knowledge and in habits of business Mordaunt and Delamere were mere children when compared with him ; and this William soon discovered. Similar feuds raged at other great boards and through all the subordinate ranks of public functionaries. In every customhouse, in every arsenal, were a Shrewsbury and a Nottingham, a Delamere and a Godolphin. The Whigs complained that there was no department in which creatures of the fallen tyranny were not to be found. It was idle to allege that these men were versed in the details of business, that they were the deposi- taries of official traditions, and that the friends of liberty, having Buruet, ii. 3, 4, 15. t Bumet, ii. 5. j " How does he do to distribute his hours. Some to the Court and some to the City, Some to the State, and some to Love's powers, Some to be vain, and some to be witty ! " The Modern Lampooners, a poem of 1COO. Burnet, ii. 4. 70 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. been; during many years, excluded from public employment, must necessarily be incompetent to take on themselves at once the whole management of affairs. Experience doubtless had its value : but surely the first of all the qualifications of a servant was fidelity ; and no Tory could be a really faithful servant of the new government. If King William were wise, he would rather trust novices zealous for his interest and honour than veterans, who might indeed possess ability and knowledge, but who would use that ability arid that knowledge to effect his ruin. The Tories, on the other hand, complained that their share of power bore no proportion to their number, or to their weight in the country, and that everywhere old and useful public ser- vants were, for the crime of being friends to monarchy and to the Church, turned out of their posts to make way for Rye House plotters and haunters of conventicles. These upstarts, adepts in the art of factious agitation, but ignorant of all that belonged to their new calling, would be just beginning to learn their business when they had undone the nation by their blun- ders. To be a rebel and a schismatic was surely not all that ought to be required of a man in high employment. What would become of the finances, what of the marine, if Whigs who could not understand the plainest balance sheet were to manage the revenue, and Whigs who had never walked over a dockyard to fit out the fleet ? * The truth is that the charges which the two parties brought against each other were, to a great extent, well founded, but that the blame which both threw on William was unjust. Offi- cial experience was to be found almost exclusively among the Tones, hearty attachment to the new settlement almost exclu- sively among the Whigs, It was not the fault of the King that the knowledge and the zeal, which, combined, make a valuable servant of the state, must at that time be had separately or not * Ronquillo calls the Whig functionaries " Gente que no tienen pratica ni ex- peiiencia." He adds, " Y de esto precede el pasarse un mes y un otro, sin execu- tarse nada." June 24, 1689. In one of the innumerable Dialogues -which ap- peared at that time, the Tory interlocutor puts the question, " Do you think the government would be better served by strangers to business ? " The Whig answers, " Better ignorant friends tliau understanding enemies." WILLIAM AND MART. 71 at all. If he employed men of one party, there was great risk of mistakes. If he employed men of the other party, there was great risk of treachery. If he employed men of both parties there was still some risk of mistakes ; there was still some risk of treachery ; and to these risks was added the certainty of dissension. He might join Whigs and Tories : but it was beyond his power to mix them. In the same office, at the same desk, they were still enemies, and agreed only in murmuring at the Prince who tried to mediate between them. It was inevitable that, in such circumstances, the administration, fiscal, military, naval, should be feeble and unsteady ; that nothing should be done in quite the right way or at quite the right time : that the distractions from which scarcely any public office was exempt should produce disasters, and that every disaster should increase the distractions from which it had sprung. There was indeed one department of which the business was well conducted ; and that was the department of Foreign Af- fairs. There William directed everything, and, on important occasions, neither asked the advice nor employed the agency of any English politician. One invaluable assistant he had, Anthony Heinsius, who, a few weeks after the Revolution had been accomplished, became Pensionary of Holland. Heinsius had entered public life as a member of that party which was jealous of the power of the House of Orange, and desirous to be on friendly terms with France. But he had been sent in 1681 on a diplomatic mission to Versailles; and a short resi- dence there had produced a complete change in his views. On a near acquaintance, he was alarmed by the power and pro- voked by the insolence of that Court of which, while he con- templated it only at a distance, he had formed a favourable opinion. He found that his country was despised. He saw his religion persecuted. His official character did not save him from some personal affronts which, to the latest day of his long career, he never forgot. He went home a devoted adherent of William and a mortal enemy of Lewis.* N^gociations de M. Le Comte d'Avaux, 4 Mars 1683 ; Torcy's Memoirs. 72 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. The office of Pensionary, always important, was peculiarly important when the Stadtholder was absent from the Hague. Had the politics of Heinsius been still what they once were, all the great designs of William might have been frustrated. But happily there was between these two eminent men a perfect friendship, which, till death dissolved it, appears never to have been interrupted for one moment by suspicion or ill humour. On all large questions of European policy they cordially agreed. They corresponded assiduously and most unreservedly. For, though William was slow to give his confidence, yet, when he gave it, he gave it entire. The correspondence is still extant, and is most honourable to both. The King's letters would alone suffice to prove that he was one of the greatest statesmen whom Europe has produced. While he lived, the Pensionary was content to be the most obedient, the most trusty, and the most discreet of servants. But, after the death of the master, the servant proved himself capable of supplying with eminent ability the master's place, and was renowned throughout Europe as one of the great Triumvirate which humbled the pride of Lewis the Fourteenth.* The foreign policy of England, directed immediately by William in close concert with Heinsius, was, at this time, emi- nently skilful and successful. But in every other part of the administration the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were but too plainly discernible. Nor was this all. To the evils arising from the mutual animosity of factions were added other evils arising from the mutual animosity of sects. The year 1689 is a not less important epoch in the ecclesi- astical than in the civil history of England. In that year was granted the first legal indulgence to Dissenters. In that year was made the last serious attempt to bring the Presbyterians * The original correspondence of William and Heinsius is in Dutch. A French translation of all William's letters, and an English translation of a few of Heinsius's letters, are among the Mackintosh MSS. The Baron Sirtema de Grovestins, who has had access to the originals, frequently quotes passages in his " Histoire des luttes et rivalit^s entre les puissances maritimes et la France." There is very little difference in substance, though much in phraseology, between Ms .version and that which I have used. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 73 within the pale of the Church of England. From that year dates a new schism made in defiance of ancient precedents, by men who had always professed to regard schism with peculiar abhorrence, and ancient precedents with peculiar veneration. In that year began the long struggle between two great parties of conformists. Those parties indeed had, under various forms, existed within the Anglican communion ever since the Reforma- tion ; but till after the Revolution they did not appear marshalled in regular and permanent order of battle against each other, and were therefore not known by established names. Some time after the accession of William they began to be called the High Church party and the Low Church party ; and, long before tho end of his reign, these appellations were in common use.* In the summer of 1688 the breaches which had long divided the great body of English Protestants had seemed to be almost closed. Disputes about Bishops and Synods, written prayers and extemporaneous prayers, white gowns and black gowns, sprinkling and dipping, kneeling and sitting, had been for a short space intermitted. The serried array which was then drawn up against Popery measured the whole of the vast interval which separated Sancroft from Bunyan. Prelates recently conspicuous as persecutors, now declared themselves friends of religious liberty, and exhorted their clergy to live in a constant inter- change of hospitality and of kind offices with the Separatists. Separatists, on the other hand, who had recently considered mitres and lawn sleeves as the livery of Antichrist, were putting candles in windows and throwing faggots on bonfires in honour of the prelates. These feelings continued to grow till they attained their greatest height on the memorable day on which the common oppressor finally quitted Whitehall, and on which an innumer- able multitude, tricked out in orange ribands, welcomed the common deliverer to St. James's. When the clergy of London came, headed by Compton, to express their gratitude to him by * Though these very convenient names are not, as far as I know, to be found in any book printed during the earlier years of William's reign, I shall use them without scruple, as others have done, in writing about the transactions of those years. 74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. whose instrumentality God had wrought salvation for the Church and the State, the procession was swollen by some eminent nonconformist divines. It was delightful to many good men to hear that pious and learned Presbyterian ministers had walked in the train of a Bishop, had been greeted by him with fraternal kindness, and had been announced by him in the presence cham- ber as his dear and respected friends, separated from him indeed by some differences of opinion on minor points, but united to him by Christian charity and by common zeal for the essentials of tho reformed faith. There had never before been such a day in England ; and there has never since been such a day. The tide of feeling was already on the turn ; and the ebb was even more rapid than the flow had been. In a very few hours the High Churchman began to feel tenderness for the enemy whose tyranny was now no longer feared, and dislike of the allies whose services were now no longer needed. It was easy to gratify both feelings by imputing to the Dissenters the mis- government of the exiled King. His Majesty, such was now the language of too many Anglican divines, would have been an excellent sovereign had he not been too confiding, too for- giving. He had put his trust in a class of men who hated his office, his family, his person, with implacable hatred. He had ruined himself in the vain attempt to con- ciliate them. He had relieved them, in defiance of law and of the unanimous sense of the old royalist party, from the pressure of the penal code ; had allowed them to worship God publicly after their own mean and tasteless fashion ; had admitted them to the bench of justice and to the Privy Council ; had gratified them with fur robes, gold chains, salaries, and pensions. In return for his liberality, these people, once so uncouth in de- meanour, once so savage in opposition even to legitimate au- thority, had become the most abject of flatterers. They had continued to applaud and encourage him when the most devoted friends of his family had retired in shame and sorrow from his palace. Who had more foully sold the religion and liberty of England than Titus ? Who had been more zealous for the dis- pensing power than Alsop ? Who had urged on the persecution WILLIAM AND MART. 75 of the seven Bishops more fiercely than Lobb ? What chaplain, impatient for a deanery had ever, even when preaching in the royal presence on the thirtieth of January or the twenty-ninth of May, uttered adulation more gross than might easily be found in those addresses by which dissenting congregations had testified their gratitude for the illegal Declaration of Indulgence ? "Was it strange that a prince who had never studied law books should have believed that he was only exercising his rightful preroga- tive, when he was thus encoui'aged by a faction which had always ostentatiously professed hatred of arbitrary power ? Misled by such guidance he had gone further and further in the wrong path : he had at length estranged from him hearts which would once have poured forth their best blood in his defence : he had left himself no supporters except his old foes ; and, when the day of peril came, he had found that the feeling of his old foes towards him was still what it had been when they had at- tempted to rob him of his inheritance, and when they had plotted against his life. Every man of sense had long known that the sectaries bore no love to monarchy. It had now been found that they bore as little love to freedom. To trust them with power would be an error not less fatal to the nation than to the throne. If, in order to redeem pledges somewhat rashly given it should be thought necessary to grant them relief, every con- cession ought to be accompanied by limitations and precautions. Above all, no man who was an enemy to the ecclesiastical con- stitution of the realm ought to be permitted to bear any part in the civil government. Between the nonconformists and the rigid conformists stood the Low Church party. That party contained, as it still contains, two very different elements, a Puritan element and a Latitudinarian element. On almost every question, how- ever, relating either to ecclesiastical polity or to the ceremo- nial of public worship, the Puritan Low Churchman and the Latitudinarian Low Churchman were perfectly agreed. They saw in the existing polity and in the existing ceremonial no defect, no blemish, which could make it their duty to become dissenters. Nevertheless they held that both the polity and 76 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the ceremonial were means and not ends, and that the essential spirit of Christianity might exist without episcopal orders and without a Book of Common Prayer They had, while James was on the throne, been mainly instrumental iu forming the great Protestant coalition against Popery and tyranny ; and they continued in 1689 to hold the same conciliatory language which they had held in 1688. They gently blamed the scruples of the nonconformists. It was undoubtedly a great weakness to imagine that there could be any sin in wearing a white robe, in tracing a cross, in kneeling at the rails of an altar. But the highest authority had given the plainest directions as to the man- ner in which such weakness was to be treated. The weak brother was not to be judged : he was not to be despised : believers who had stronger minds were commanded to soothe him by large compliances, and carefully to remove out of his path every stum- blingblock which could cause him to offend. An apostle had declared that, though he had himself no misgivings about the use of animal food or of wine, he would eat herbs and drink water rather than give scandal to the feeblest of his flock. What would he have thought of ecclesiastical rulers who, for the sake of a vestment, a gesture, a posture, had not only torn the Church asunder, but had filled all the gaols of England with men of orthodox faith and saintly life ? The reflections thrown by the High Churchmen on the recent conduct of the dissenting body the Low Churchmen pronounced to be grossly unjust. The wonder was, not that a few nonconformists should have ac- cepted with thanks an indulgence which, illegal as it was, had opened the doors of their prisons and given security to their hearths, but that the nonconformists generally should have been true to the cause of a constitution from the benefits of which they had been long excluded. It was most unfair to impute to a great party the faults of a few individuals. Even among the Bishops of the established Church James had found tools and sycophants. The conduct of Cartwright and Parker had been much more inexcusable than that of Alsop and Lobb. Yet those who held the Dissenters answerable for the errors of Alsop and Lobb would doubtless think it most unreasonable to hold WILLIAM AND MARY. 77 the Church answerable for the far deeper guilt of Cartwright and Parker. The Low Church clergymen were a minority, and not a largo minority, of their profession : but their weight was much more than proportioned to their numbers : for they mustered strong in the capital : they had great influence there ; and the average of intellect and knowledge was higher among them than among their order generally. We should probably overrate their numerical strength, if we were to estimate them at a tenth part of the priesthood. Yet it will scarcely be denied that there were among them as many men of distinguished eloquence and learning as could be found in the other nine tenths. Among the laity who conformed to the established religion the parties were not unevenly balanced. Indeed the line which separated them deviated very little from the line which separa ed the Whigs and the Tories. In the House of Commons, which had been elected when the Whigs were triumphant, the Low Church party greatly preponderated. In the Lords there was an almost exact equipoise ; and very slight circumstances sufficed to turn the scale. The head of the Low Church party was the King. He had been bred a Presbyterian: he was, from rational conviction, a Latitudinarian ; and personal ambition, as well as higher mo- tives, prompted him to act as mediator among Protestant sects. He was bent on effecting three_great reforms in the laws touch- ing ecclesiastical matters. His first object was to obtain for dissenters permission to celebrate their worship in freedom and security. His second object was to make such changes in the Anglican ritual and polity as, without offending those to whom that ritual and that polity were dear, might conciliate the moder- ate nonconformists. His third object was to throw open civil offices to Protestants without distinction of sect. All his three objects were good ; but the first only was at that time attainable. He came too late for the second, and too early for the third. A few davs after his accession, he took a step which indi- cated, in a manner not to be mistaken, his sentiments touch- ing ecclesiastical polity and public worship^. He found only 78 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. one see unprovided with a Bishop. Seth Ward, who hn<1 during many years had charge of the diocese of Salisbury, and who had been honourably distinguished as one of the founders of the Royal Society, having long survived his faculties, died while the country was agitated by the elections for the Convention, without knowing that great events, of which not the least important had passed under his own roof, had saved his Church and his country from ruin. The choice of a successor was no light matter. That choice would inevit- ably be considered by the country as a prognostic of the high- est import. The King too might well be perplexed by the number of divines whose erudition, eloquence, courage, and up- rightness had been conspicuously displayed during the conten- tions of the last three years. The preference was given to Burnet. His claims were doubtless great. Yet William might have had a more tranquil reign if he had postponed for a time the well earned promotion of his chaplain, and had bestowed the first great spiritual preferment, which, after the Revolution, fell to the disposal of the Crown, on Some eminent theologian, attached to the new settlement, yet not generally hated by the clergy. Unhappily the name of Burnet was odious to the great majority of the Anglican priesthood. Though, as respected doc- trine, he by no means belonged to the extreme section of the Latitudinarian party, he was popularly regarded as the person- ification of the Latitudinarian spirit. This distinction he owed to the prominent place which he held in literature and politics, to the readiness of his tongue and of his pen, and above all to the frankness and boldness of his nature, frankness, which could keep no secret, and boldness which flinched from no danger. He had formed but a low estimate of the character of his cleri- cal brethren considered as a body ; and with his usual indiscre- tion, he frequently suffered his opinion to escape him. They hated him in return with a hatred which has descended to their successors, and which, after the lapse of a century and a half, does not appear to languish. As soon as the King's decision was known, the question was everywhere asked, What will the Archbishop do? Saiicroft WILLIAM AND MARY. 79 had absented himself from the Convention : he had refused to sit in the Privy Council : he had ceased to confirm, to ordain, and to institute ; and he was seldom seen beyond the walls of his palace at Lambeth. He, on all occasions, professed to think himself still bound by his old oath of allegiance. Buruet he re- garded as a scandal to the priesthood, a Presbyterian in a sur plice. The prelate who should lay hands on that unworthy head would commit more than one great sin. He would, in a sacred place, and before a great congregation of the faithful, at once acknowledge an usurper as a King, and confer on a schis- matic the character of a Bishop. During some time Bancroft positively declared that he would not obey the precept of Wil- liam. Lloyd of Saint Asaph, who was the common friend of the Archbishop and of the Bishop elect, entreated and expostulated in vain*. Nottingham, who, of all the laymen connected with the new government, stood best with the clergy, tried his in- fluence, but to no better purpose. The Jacobites said every- where that they were sure of the good old Primate ; that he had the spirit of a martyr ; that he was determined to brave, in the cause of the Monarchy and of the Church, the utmost rigour of those laws with which the obsequious parliaments of the six- teenth century hud fenced the Royal Supremacy. He did in truth hold out long. But at the last moment his heart failed him, and he looked round him for some mode of escape. For- tunately, as childish scruples often disturbed his conscience, childish expedients often quieted it. A more childish expedient than that to which he now resorted is not to be found in all the tomes of the casuists. He would not himself bear a part in the service. He would not publicly pray for the Prince and Prin- cess as King and Queen. He would not call for their mandate, order it to be read, and then proceed to obey it. But he issued a commission empowering any three of his suffragans to commit in his name, and as his delegates, the sins which he did not choose to commitin person. The reproaches of all parties soon made him ashamed of himself. He then tried to suppress the evidence of his fault by means more discreditable than the fault itself. He abstracted from among the public records of 80 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. which he was the guardian the instrument by which he had au- thorised his brethren to act for him, and was with difficulty in- duced to give it up.* Buruet however had, under the authority of this instru- ment, been consecrated. When he next waited on Mary, she reminded him of the conversations which they had held at the Hague about the high duties and grave responsibility of Bishops- " I hope," die said, " that you will put your notions in practice." Her hope was not disappointed. Whatever may be thought of Burnet's opinions touching civil and ecclesiastical polity, or of the temper and judgment which he showed in de- fending those opinions, the utmost malevolence of faction could not venture to deny that he tended his flock with a zeal, dili- gence, and disinterestedness worthy of the purest ages 01 the Church. His jurisdiction extended over Wiltshire and Berk- shire. These counties he divided into districts which he sedu- lously visited. About two mouths of every summer he passed in preaching, catechising, and confirming daily from church to church. When he died there was no corner of his diocese in which the people had not had seven or eight opportunities of receiving his instructions and of asking his advice. The worst weather, the worst roads, did not prevent him from discharging these duties. On one occasion, when the floods were out, he exposed his life to imminent risk rather than disappoint a rural congregation which was in expectation of a discourse from the Bishop. The poverty of the inferior clergy was a constant cause of uneasiness to his kind and generous heart. He was indefatigable and at length successful in his attempts to obtain for them from the Crown that grant which is known by the name of Queen Anne's Bounty, f He was especially careful, when he travelled through his diocese, to lay no burden on them. Instead of requiring them to entertain him, he entertained them. He always fixed his head quarters at a market town, * Burnet, ii. 8; Birch's Life of Tillotson; Life of Kettlewell, part iii. section H2. t Swift willing under the name of Gregory Misosarum, most malignantly and dishonestly represents Burnet as grudging this grant to the Church. Swift can- not have been Ignorant that the Church was indebted for the grant chiefly to Burnet's persevering exertions. WILLIAM AND MART. 81 kept a table there, and, by his decent hospitality and munifi- cent charities, tried to conciliate those who were prejudiced against his doctrines. When he bestowed a poor benefice, and he had many such to bestow, his practice was to add out of his own purse twenty pounds a year to the income. Ten promising young men, to each of whom he allowed thirty pounds a year, studied divinity under his. own eye in the close of Salisbury. He had several children : but he did not think himself justified in hoarding for them. Their mother had brought him a good fortune. With that fortune, he always said, they must be content. He would not, for their sakes, be guilty of the crime of raising an estate out of revenues sacred to piety and charity. Such merits as these will, in the judg- ment of wise and candid men, appear fully to atone for every offence which can be justly imputed to him.* When he took his seat in the House of Lords, he found that assembly busied in ecclesiastical legislation. A statesman who was well known to be devoted to the Church had undertaken to plead the cause of the Dissenters. No subject in the realm occupied so important and commanding a position with refer- ence to religious parties as Nottingham. To the influence derived from rank, from wealth, and from office, he added the higher influence which belongs to knowledge, to eloquence, and to integrity. The orthodoxy of his creed, the regularity of his devotions, and the purity of his morals gave a peculiar weight to his opinions on questions in which the interests of Christian- ity were concerned. Of all the ministers of the new Sovereigns, he had the largest share of the confidence of the clergy. Shrews- bury was certainly a Whig, and probably a freethinker : he had lost one religion ; and it did not very clearly appear that he had found another. Halifax had been during many years ac- * See the Life of Burnet, at the end of the second volume of his liistory, his manuscript memoirs, Harl. 6584, his memorials touching the First Fruits and Tenths, and Somers's letter to him on that subject. See also what Dr. King, Jacobite as he was. had the justice to say in his Anecdotes. A most honourable testimony to Bnrnet's virtues, piven by another Jacobite who had attacked him fiercely, and whom he hnd treatorl ppnerouly. the learned and upright Thomas Baker, will be found in the Gentleman's Magazine for August and September. 1791. VOL. in. 6 82 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. cused of scepticism, deism, atheism. Danny's attachment to episcopacy and the liturgy was rather political than religious. But Nottingham was such a son as the Church was proud to own. Propositions therefore, which, if made by his colleagues, would infallibly produce a violent panic among the clergy,miglit, if made by him, find a favourable reception even in universities and chapter houses. The friends of religious liberty were with good reason desirous to obtain his cooperation ; and, up to a certain point, he was not unwilling to cooperate with them. He was decidedly for a toleration. He was even for what was then called a comprehension : that is to say, he was desirous to make some alterations in the Anglican discipline and ritual for the purpose of removing the scruples of the moderate Presbyterians. But he was not prepared to give up the Test Act. The only fault which he found with that Act was that it was not suffi- ciently stringent, and that it left loopholes through which schismatics sometimes crept into civil employments. In truth it was because he was not disposed to part with the Test that he was willing to consent to socie changes in the Liturgy. He conceived that, if the entrance of the Church were but a very little widened, great numbers who had hitherto lingered near the threshold would press in. Those who still remained with- out would then not be sufficiently numerous or powerful to extort any further concession, and would be glad to compound for a bare toleration.* The opinion of the Low Churchmen concerning the Test Act differed widely from his. But many of them thought that it was of the highest importance to have his support on the great questions of Toleration and Comprehension. From the scattered fragments of information which have come down to us, it appears that a compromise was made. It is quite certain that Nottingham undertook to bring in a Toleration Bill and a Comprehension Bill, and to use his best endeavours to carry both bills through the House of Lords. It is highly probable * Oldmixon would have us believe that Nottingham was not, at this time, unwilling to give up the Test Act. But Oldmixon's assertion, unsupported by evidence, is of no weight whatever ; and all the evidence which he produces makes against his assertion. WILLIAM AND MARY. 85 that, in return for this great service, some of the leading Whigs consented to let the Test Act remain for the present unaltered. There was no difficulty in framing either the Toleration Bill or the Comprehension Bill. The situation of the dissent- ers had been much discussed nine or ten years before, when the kingdom was distracted by the fear of a P'opish plot, and when there was among Protestants a general disposition to unite against the common enemy, The government had then bean willing to make large concessions to the Whig party, on con- dition that the crown should be suffered to descend according to the regular course. A draught of a law authorizing the public worship of the Nonconformists, and a draught of a law making some alterations in the public worship of the Established Church, had been prepared, and would probably have been passed by both Houses without difficulty, had not Shaftesbury and his coadjutors refused to listen to any terms, and, by grasping at what was beyond their reach, missed advantages which might easily have been secured. In the framing of these draughts, Nottingham, then an active member of the House of Commons, had borne a considerable part. He now brought them forth from the obscurity in which they had remained since the disso- lution of the Oxford Parliament, and laid them, with some slight, alterations, on the table of the Lords.* The Toleration Bill passed both Houses with little debate. This celebrated statute, long considered as the Great Charter of religious liberty, has since been extensively modified, and is hardly known to the present generation except by name. The name, however, is still pronounced with respect by many who will perhaps learn with surprise and disappointment the real nature of the law which they have been accustomed to hold in, honour. Several statutes which had been passed between the acces- sion of Queen Elizabeth and v the Revolution required all people * Burnet, ii. 6; Van Citters to the States General, March 1-11, 168!); King William's Toleration, being an explanation of that liberty of conscience which maybe expected from His Majesty's Declaration, with a Bill for Comprehension and Indulgence, drawii up iu order to au Act of 1'uiUuuicm, licensed March 25, MM. 84 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. under severe penalties to attend the services of the Church of England, and to abstain from attending conventicles. The Toleration Act did not repeal any of these statutes, but merely provided that they should not be construed to extend to any person who should testify his loyalty by taking the Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, and his Protestantism by subscribing the Declaration against Transubstantiatiou. The relief thus granted was common between the dissenting laity and the dissenting clergy. But the dissenting clergy had some peculiar grievances. The Act of Uniformity had laid a mulct of a hundred pounds on every person who, not having received episcopal ordination, should presume to administer the Eucharist. The Five Mile Act had driven many pious and learned ministers from their houses and their friends, to live among rustics in obscure villages of which the name was not to be seen on the map. The Conventicle Act had imposed heavy fines on divines who should preach in any meeting of separatists ; and, in direct opposition to the humane spirit of our law, the Courts were enjoined to construe this act largely and benefi- cially for the suppressing of dissent and for the encouraging of informers. These severe statutes were not repealed, but were, with many conditions and precautions, relaxed. It was pro- vided that every dissenting minister should, before he exercised his function, profess under his hand his belief in the Articles of the Church of England, with a few exceptions. The proposi- tions to which he was not required to assent were these ; that the Church has power to regulate ceremonies ; that the doc- trines set forth in the Book of Homilies are sound ; and that there is nothing superstitious or idolatrous in the ordination ser- vice. If he declared himself a Baptist, he was also excused from affirming that the baptism of infants is a laudable practice. But, unless his conscience suffered him to subscribe thirty-four of the thirty-nine Articles, and the- greater part of two other Articles, he could not preach without incurring all the punish- ments which the Cavaliers, in the day of their power and their vengeance, had devised for the tormenting and ruining of schis- matical teachers. WILLIAM AND MART. 85 The situation of the Quaker differed from that of other dis- senters, and differed for the worse. The Presbyterian, the In- dependent, and the Baptist had no scruple about the Oath of Supremacy. But the Quaker refused to take it, not because he objected to the proposition that foreign sovereigns and prelates have no jurisdiction in England, but because his conscience would not suffer him to swear to any proposition whatever. He was therefore exposed to the severity of part of that penal code which, long before Quakerism existed, had been enacted against Roman Catholics by the Parliaments of Elizabeth. Soon after the Restoration, a severe law, distinct from the general law which applied to all conventicles, had been passed against meetings of Quakers. The Toleration Act permitted the mem- bers of this harmless sect to hold their assemblies in peace, on condition of signing three documents, a declaration against Transubstautiation, a promise of fidelity to the government, and a confession of Christian belief. The objections which the Quaker had to the Athanasian phraseology had brought on him the imputation of Socinianism : and the strong language in which he sometimes asserted that he derived his knowledge of O spiritual things directly from above had raised a suspicion that he thought lightly of the authority of Scripture. He was therefore required to profess his faith in the divinity of the Son and of the Holy Ghost, and in the inspiration of the Old and New Testaments. Such were the terms on which the Protestant dissenters of England were, for the first time, permitted by law to worship God according to their own conscience. They were very prop- erly forbidden to assemble with barred doors, but were pro- tected against hostile intrusion by a clause which made it penal to enter a meeting house for the purpose of molesting the con- gregation. As if the numerous limitations and precautions which have been mentioned were insufficient, it was emphatically declared that the legislature did not intend to grant the smallest indul- gence to any Papist, or to any person who denied the doctrine of the Trinity as that doctrine is set forth in the formularies of the Church of England. 86 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Of all the Acts that have ever been passed by Parliament, the Toleration Act is perhaps that which most strikingly illus- trates the peculiar vices and the peculiar excellences of English legislation. The science of Politics bears in one respect a close analogy to the science of Mechanics. The mathematician can easily demonstrate that a certain power, applied by means of a certain lever or of a certain system of pulleys, will suffice to raise a certain weight. But his demonstration proceeds on the supposition that the machinery is such as no load will bend or break. If the engineer, who has to lift a great mass of real granite by the instrumentality of real timber and real hemp, should absolutely rely on the propositions which he finds in treatises on Dynamics, and should make no allowance for the imperfection of his materials, his whole apparatus of beams, wheels, and ropes would soon come down in ruin, and, with all his geometrical skill, he would be found a far inferior builder to those painted barbarians who, though they never heard of the parallelogram of forces, managed to pile up Stonehenge. What the engineer is to the mathematician, the active statesman is to the contemplative statesman. It is indeed most important that legislators and administrators should be versed in the philosophy of government, as it is most important that the architect, who has to fix an obelisk on its pedestal, or to hang a tubular bridge over an estuary, should be versed in the philosophy of equili- brium and motion. But, as he who has actually to build must bear in mind many things never noticed by D'Alembert and Euler, so must he who has actually to govern be perpetually guided by considerations to which no allusion can be found in the writings of Adam Smith or Jeremy Bentham. The perfect lawgiver is a just temper between the mere man of theory, who can see nothing but general principles, and the mere man of busi- ness, who can see nothing but particular circumstances. Of lawgivers in whom the speculative element has prevailed to the exclusion of the practical, the world has during the last eighty years been singularly fruitful. To their wisdom Europe and America have owed scores of abortive constitutions, scores of constitutions which have lived just long enough to make a miser- WILLIAM AND MART. 87 able noise, and have then gone off in convulsions. But in English legislation the practical element has always predominated, and not seldom unduly predominated, over the speculative. To think nothing of symmetry and much of convenience ; never to remove an anomaly merely because it is an anpmaly ; never to innovate except when some grievance is felt ; never to innovate except so far as to get rid of the grievance ; never to lay down any proposition of wider extent than the particular case for which it is necessary to provide ; these are the rules which have from the age of John to the age of Victoria, generally guided the deliberations of our two hundred and fifty Parliaments. Our national distaste for whatever is abstract in political science amounts undoubtedly to a fault. Yet it is, perhaps, a fault on the right side. That we have been far too slow to improve our laws must be admitted. But, though in other countries there may have occasionally been more rapid progress, it would not be easy to name any other country in which there has been so little retrogression. The Toleration Act approaches very near to tho idea of a great English law. To a Jurist, versed in the theory of legisla- tion, but not intimately acquainted with the temper of the sects and parties into which the nation was divided at the time of the Revolution, that Act would seem to be a mere chaos of absurd- ities and contradictions. It will not bear to be tried by sound general principles. Nay, it will not bear to be tried by any principle, sound or unsound. The sound principle undoubtedly is, that mere theological error ought not to be punished by the civil magistrate. This principle the Toleration Act not only does not recognise, but positively disclaims. Not a sjngle one of the cruel laws enacted against nonconformists by the Tudors or the Stuarts is repealed. Persecution continues to be the gen- eral rule. Toleration is the exception. Nor is this all. The freedom which is given to conscience is given in the most capricious manner. A Quaker, by making a declaration of faith in general terms, obtains the full benefit of the Act without signing one of the thirty-nine Articles. An Independent minis- ter, who is perfectly willing to make the declaration required 88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. from the Quaker, but who has doubts about six or seven of the Articles, remains still subject to the penal laws. Howe is liable to punishment if he preaches before he has solemnly de- clared his assent to the Anglican doctrine touching the Euchar- ist. Penn, who altogether rejects the Eucharist, is at perfect liberty to preach without making any declaration whatever on the subject. These are some of the obvious faults which must strike every person who examines the Toleration Act by that standard of just reason which is the same in all countries and in all ages. But these very faults may perhaps appear to be merits, when we take into consideration the passions and prejudices of those for whom the Toleration Act was framed. This law, abound- ing with contradictions which every smatterer in political phi- losophy can detect, did what a law framed by the utmost skill of the greatest masters of political philosophy might have failed to do. That the provisions which have been recapitulated are cumbrous, puerile, inconsistent with each other, inconsistent with the true theory of relig'.ous liberty, must be acknowledged. All that can be said in their defence is this ; that they removed a vast mass of evil without shocking a vast mass of prejudice ; that they pflt an end, at once and for ever, without one division in either House of Parliament, without one riot in the streets, with scarcely one audible murmur even from the classes most deeply tainted with bigotry, to a persecution which raged du- ring four generations, which had broken innumerable hearts, which had made innumerable firesides desolate, which had filled the prisons with men of whom the world was not worthy, which had driven thousands of those honest, diligent, and godfearing yeomen and artisans, who are the true strength of a nation, to seek a refuge beyond the ocean among the wigwams of red Indians and the lairs of panthers. Such a defence, however weak it may appear to some shallow speculators, will probably be thought complete by statesmen. The English, in 1689, were by no means disposed to admit the doctrine that religious error ought to be left unpunished. That doctrine was just then more unpopular than it had ever WILLIAM AND MART. 89 been. For it had, only a few months before, been hypocriti- cally put forward as a pretext for persecuting the Established Church, for trampling on the fundamental laws of the realm, for confiscating freeholds, for treating as a crime the modest ex- ercise of the right of petition. If a bill had then been drawn up granting entire freedom of conscience to all Protestants, it may be confidently affirmed that Nottingham would never have introduced such a bill ; that all the bishops, Burnet included, would have voted against it ; that it would have been denounced Sunday after Sunday, from ten thousand pulpits, as an insult to* God and to all Christian men, and as a license to the worst heretics and blasphemers ; that it would have been condemned almost as vehemently by Bates and Baxter as by Ken and Sher- lock ; that it would have been burned by the mob in half the mar- ket places of England ; that it would never have become the law of the land, and that it would have made the very name of toler- ation odious during many years to the great majority of the peo- ple. And yet, if such a bill had been passed, what would it have effected beyond what was effected by the Toleration Act ? It is true that the Toleration Act recognised persecution as the rule, and granted liberty of conscience only as the excep- tion. But it is equally true that the rule remained in force only against a few hundreds of Protestant dissenters, and that the benefit of the exceptions extended to hundreds of thou- sands. It is true that it was in theory absurd to make Howe sign thirty-four or thirty-five of the Anglican Articles before he could preach, and to let Pefin preach without signing one of those Articles. But it is equally true that under this arrange- ment both Howe and Penn got as entire liberty to preach as they could have had under the most philosophical code that Deccaria or Jefferson could have framed. The progress of the bill was easy. Only one amendment of grave importance was proposed. Some zealous churchmen in the Commons suggested that it might be desirable to grant the toleration o.ily for a term of seven years, and thus to bind over the nonconformists to good behaviour. But this suggestion 90 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. was so unfavourably received that those who made it did not venture to divide the House.* The King gave his consent with hearty satisfaction : the bill became law; and the Puritan divines thronged to the Quarter Sessions of every county to swear and sign. Many of them probably professed their assent to the Articles with some tacit reservations. But the tender conscience of Baxter would not suffer him to qualify, till he had put on record an explana- tion of the sense in which he understood every proposition which seemed to him to admit of misconstruction. The instru- ment delivered by him to the Court before which he took the oaths is still extant, and contains two passages of peculiar in- terest. He declared that his approbation of the Athanasian Creed was confined to that part which was properly a Creed, and that he did not mean to express any assent to the damnatory clauses. He also declared that he did not, by signing the article which anathematises all who maintain that there is any other salva>ion than through Christ, mean to condemn those who entertain a hope that sincere and virtuous unbelievers may be admitted to partake in the benefits of Redemption. Many of the dissenting clergy of London expressed their concurrence in these charitable sentiments, f The history of the Comprehension Bill presents a remark- able contrast to the history of the Toleration Bill. The two bills had a common origin, and, to a great extent, a common object. They were framed at the same time, and laid aside at the same time : they sank together into oblivion, and they were, after the lapse of several years, again brought together before the world. Both were laid by the same peer on the table of the Upper House ; and both were referred to the same select committee. But it soon began to appear that they would have widely different fates. The Comprehension Bill was indeed a neater specimen of legislative workmanship than the Tolera- tion Bill, but was not, like the Toleration Bill, adapted to the * Common's Journals, May 17, 1689. t Sense of the subscribed articles by the Ministers of London, 1690 ; Calamy's Historical Additions to Baxter's Life. WILLIAM AND MAKT. 91 wants, the feelings, and the prejudices of the existing genera- tion. Accordingly while the Toleration Bill found* support in all quarters, the Comprehension Bill was attacked from all quarters, and was at last coldly and languidly defended even by those who had introduced it. About the same time at which the Toleration Bill became law with the general concurrence of public men, the Comprehension Bill was, with a concurrence not less general, suffered to drop. The Toleration Bill still ranks among those great statutes which are epochs in our con- stitutional history. The Comprehension Bill is forgotten. No collector of antiquities has thought it worth preserving. A single copy, the same which Nottingham presented to the Peers, is still among our parliamentary records, but has been seen by only two or three persons now living. It is a fortunate circumstance that, in this copy, almost the whole history of the Bill can be read. In spite of cancellations and interlineations, the original words can easily be distinguished from those which were inserted in the committee or on the report.* The first clause, as it stood when the bill was introduced, dispensed all the ministers of the Established Church from the necessity of subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. For the Articles was substituted a Declaration which ran thus ; " I do approve of the doctrine and worship and government of the Church of England by law established, as containing all things necessary to salvation ; and I promise, in the exercise of my ministry, to preach and practise according thereunto." An- other clause granted similar indulgence to the members of the two universities. Then it was provided that any minister who had been ordained after the Presbyterian fashion might, without reordina- tion, acquire all tbe privileges of a priest of the Established Church. He must, however, be admitted to his new functions by the imposition of the hands of a bishop, who was to pronounce * The bill will be found among the Archives of the House of Lords. It is strange that this vast collection of important documents should have been alto- gether neglected, even by our most exact and diligent historians. It was opened to me by one of the most valued of my friends, Sir John Lefevre ; and my re- searches were greatly assisted by the kindness of Mr. Thorns. 92 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the following form of words ; " Take thou authority to preach the word of God, and administer the sacraments, and to perform all other ministerial offices in the Church of England." The person thus admitted was to be capable of holding any rectory or vicarage in the kingdom. Then followed clauses providing that a clergyman might, except in a few churches of peculiar dignity, wear the surplice or not as he thought fit, that the sign of the cross might be omitted in baptism, that children might be christened, if such were the wish of their parents, without godfathers or godmothers, and that persons who had a scruple about receiving the Eucharist kneeling might receive it sitting. The concluding clause was drawn in the form of a petition. It was proposed that the two Houses should request the King and Queen to issue a commission empowering thirty divines of the Established Church to' revise the liturgy, the canons, and the constitution of the ecclesiastical courts, and to recommend such alterations as might on enquiry appear to be desirable. The bill went smoothly through the first stages. Compton, who, since Sancroft had shut himself up at Lambeth, was vir- tually Primate, supported Nottingham with ardour.* In the committee, however, it appeared that there was a strong body of churchmen, who were as obstinately determined not to give up a single word or form as if they had thought that prayers were no prayers if read without the surplice, that a babe could be no Christian if not marked with the cross, that bread and wine could be no memorials of redemption or vehicles of grace if not received on bended knee. Why, these persons asked, was the docile and affectionate son of the Church to be disgusted by seeing the irreverent practices of a conventicle introduced into her majestic choirs ? Why should his feelings, his prejudices, * Among the Tanner MSS. in the feodleian Library is a very curious letter from Compton to Sancroft, about the Toleration Bill and the Comprehension Bill. "These," says Compton, " are two great works in which the being of our Church is concerned ; and I hope you will send to the House for copies. For though we are under a conquest, God has given us favour in the eyes of our rulers ; and we may keep our Church if we will." ttaucryt't eeenis to have re* turned no answer. WILLIAM AND MART. 93 if prejudices they were, be less considered than the whims of schismatics ? If, as Burnet and men like Burnet were never weary of repeating, indulgence was due to a weak brother, was it less due to the brother whose weakness consisted in the excess of his love for an ancient, a decent, a beautiful ritual, associated in his imagination from childhood with all that is most sublime O and endearing, than to him whose morose and litigious mind was always devising frivolous objections to innocent and salutary usages ? But in truth, the scrupulosity of the Puritan was not that sort of scrupulosity which the Apostle had commanded believers to respect. It sprang, not from morbid tenderness of conscience, but from ceusoriousness and spiritual pride ; and none who had studied the New Testament could have failed to observe that, while we are charged carefully to avoid whatever may give scandal to the feeble, we are taught by divine precept and example to make no concession to the supercilious and uncharitable Pharisee. Was everything which was not of the essence of religion to be given up as soon as it became unpleas- ing to a knot of zealots whose heads had been turned by con- ceit and the love of novelty ? Painted glass, music, holidays, fast ("ays, were not of the essence of religion. Were the windows of King's College chapel to be broken at the demand of one set of fanatics ? Was the organ of Exeter to be silenced to please another ? Were all the village bells to be mute because Trib- ulation Wholesome and Deacon Ananias thought them profane ? Was Christmas no longer to be a day of rejoicing? Was Pas- sion week no longer to be a season of humiliation ? These changes, it is true, were not yet proposed. But if. so the High Churchmen reasonci, we once admit that what is harmless and edifying is to be given up because it offends some narrow understandings and some gloomy tempers, where are we to stop ? And is it not probable that, by thus attempting to heal one schism, we may cause another ? All those things which the Puritans regard as the blemishes of the Church are by a large part of the population reckoned among her attractions. May she not, in ceasing to give scandal to a few sour precisians, cease also to influence the hearts of many who now delight in 94 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. her ordinances ? Is it not to be apprehended that, for every proselyte whom she allures from the meeting house, ten of her old disciples may turn away from her maimed rites and disman- tled temples, and that these new separatists may either form themselves into a sect far more formidable than the sect which we are now seeking to conciliate, or may, in the violence of their disgust at a cold and ignoble worship, be tempted to join in the solemn and gorgeous idolatry of Home ? It is remarkable that those who held this language were by no means disposed to contend for the doctrinal Articles of the Church, The truth is that, from the time of James the First, that great party which has been peculiarly zealous for the An- glican polity and the Anglican ritual has always leaned strongly towards Arminianism, and has therefore never been much at- tached to a confession of faith framed by reformers who, on questions of metaphysical divinity, generally agreed with Cal- vin. One of the characteristic marks of that party is the dis- position which it has always shown to appeal, on points of dog- matic theology, rather to the Liturgy, which was derived from Rome, than to the Articles and Homilies, which were derived from Geneva. Tl>e Calvinistic members of the Church, on the other hand, have always maintained that her deliberate judg- ment on such points is much more likely to be found in an Article or a Homily than in an ejaculation of penitence or a hymn of thanksgiving. It does not appear that, in the debates on the Comprehension Bill, a single High Churchman raised his voice against the clause which relieved the clergy from the necessity of subscribing the Articles, and of declaring the doc- trine contained in the liomilies to be sound. Nay, the Decla- ration, which in the original draught, was substituted for the Articles, was much softened down on the report. As the clause finally stood, the ministers of the Church were required, not to profess that they approved of her doctrine, but merely to acknowledge, what probably few Baptists, Quakers, or Uni- tarians would deny, that her doctrine contained all things necessary to salvation. Had the bill become law, the only people in the kingdom who would have been under the neces- WILLIAM AND MART. 95 sity of signing the Articles would have been the dissenting preachers.* The easy manner in which the zealous friends of the Church gave up her confession of faith presents a striking contrast to the spirit with which they struggled for her polity and her ritual. The clause which admitted Presbyterian ministers to hold benefices without episcopal ordination was rejected. The clause which permitted scrupulous persons to communicate sitting very narrowly escaped the same fate. In the Commit- tee it was struck out, and, on the report, was with great dif- ficulty restored. The majority of peers in the House was against the proposed indulgence, and the scale was but just turned by the proxies. But by this time it began to appear that the bill which the High Churchmen were so keenly assailing was menaced by dangers from a very different quarter. The same considerations which had induced Nottingham to support a comprehension made comprehension an object of dread and aversion to a large body of dissenters. The truth is that the time for such a scheme had gone by. If, a hundred years earlier, when the division in the Protestant body was recent, Elizabeth had been so wise as to abstain from requiring the observance of a few forms which a large part of her subjects considered as Popish, she might per- haps have averted those fearful calamities which, forty years after her death, afflicted the Church. But the general tendency of schism is to wklen. Had Leo the Tenth, -when the exactions and impostures of the Pardoners first roused the indignation of Saxony, corrected those evil practices with a vigorous hand, it is not improbable that Luther would have died in the bosom of the Church of Rome. But the opportunity was suffered to escape ; and, when, a few years later, the Vatican would gladly have purchased peace by yielding the original subject of quarrel, the original subject of quarrel was almost forgotten. The enquiring spirit which had been roused by a single abuse had discovered or The distaste of the High Churchmen for the Articles is tlie subject of a curious pamphlet published in 1689, and entitled a Dialogue between Timothy and Titua. 96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. imagined a thousand : controversies engendered controversies : every attempt that was made to accommodate one dispute ended by producing another ; and at length the General Council, which during the earlier stages of the distemper, had been supposed to be an infallible remedy, made the case utterly hopeless. In this respect, as in many others, the history of Puritanism in England bears a close analogy to the history of Protestantism in Europe. The Parliament of 1689 could no more put an end to nonconformity by tolerating a garb or a posture than the Doctors of Trent could have reconciled the Teutonic nations to the Pa- pacy by regulating the sale of indulgences. In the sixteenth century Quakerism was unknown ; and there was not in the whole realm a single congregation of Independents or Baptists- At the time of the Revolution, the Independents, Baptists, and Quakers were probably a majority of the dissenting body; and these sects could not be gained over on any terms which the lowest of Low Churchmen would have been willing to offer.- The Independent held that a national Church, governed by any central authority whatever, Pope, Patriarch, King, Bishop or Synod, was an unscriptural institution, and that every congrega- tion of believers was, under Christ, a sovereign society. The Baptist was even more irreclaimable than the Independent, and the Quaker even more irreclaimable than the Baptist. Conces- sions, therefore, which would once have extinguished noncon- formity, would not now satisfy even one half of the noncon- formists ; and it was' the obvious interest of every nonconformist whom no concession would satisfy that none of his brethren should be satisfied. The more liberal the terms of comprehen- sion, the greater was the alarm of every separatist who knew that he could, in no case, be comprehended. There was but slender hope that the dissenters, unbroken and acting as one man. would be able to obtain from the legislature full admission to civil privileges ; and all hope of obtaining such admission must be relinquished if Nottingham should, by the help of some well- meaning but shortsighted friends of religious liberty, be enabled to accomplish his design. If his bill passed, there would doubt- less be a considerable defection from the dissenting body ; and WILLIAM AND MARY. 97 every defection must be severely felt by a class already outnum- bered, depressed, and struggling against powerful enemies. Every proselyte too must be reckoned twice over, as a loss to the party which was even now too weak, and as a gain to the party which was even now too strong. The Church was but too well able to hold her own against all the sects in the kingdom ; and, if those sects were to be thinned by a large desertion, and the Church strengthened by a large reinforcement, it was plain that all chance of obtaining any relaxation of the Test Act would be at an end ; and it was but too probable that the Toleration Act might not long remain unrepealed. Even those Presbyterian ministers whose scruples the Com- prehension Bill was especially intended to remove were by no means unanimous in wishing it to pass. The ablest and most eloquent preachers among them had, since the Declaration of In- dulgence had appeared, been very agreeably settled in the capital and in other large towns, and were now about to enjoy, under the sure guarantee of an Act of Parliament, that toleration which, under the Declaration of Indulgence, had been illicit and pre carious. The situation of these men was such as the great ma- jority of the divines of the Established Church might well envy. Few indeed of the parochial clergy were so abundantly supplied with comforts as the favourite orator of a great assembly of non- conformists in the City. The voluntary contributions of his wealthy hearers, Aldermen and Deputies, West India Merchants and Turkey merchants, Wardens of the Company of Fishmong- ers and Wardens of the Company of Goldsmiths, enabled him to become a landowner or a mortgagee. The best broadcloth from Blackwell Hall, and the best poultry from Leadenhall Market, were frequently left at his door. His influence over his flock was immense. Scarcely any member of a congregation of separatists entered into a partnership, married a daughter, put a son out as apprentice, or gave his vote at an election, without consulting his spiritual guide. On all political and literary ques- tions the minister was the oracle of his own circle. It was pop- ularly remarked, during many years, that an eminent dissenting minister had only to determine whether he would make his son VOL. III. 7 98 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. an attorney or a physician ; for that the attorney was sure to have clients and the physician to have patients. While a wait- ing woman was generally considered as a help meet for a chap- lain in holy orders of the Established Church, the widows and daughters of opulent citizens were supposed to belong in a pecu- liar manner to nonconformist pastors. One of the great Pres- byterian Rabbles, therefore, might well doubt whether, in a worldly view, he should be a gainer by a comprehension. He might indeed hold a rectory or a vicarage, when he could get one. But in the meantime he would be destitute : his meeting house would be closed : his congregation would be dispersed among the parish churches : if a benefice were bestowed on him, it would probably be a very slender compensation for the income which he had lost. Nor could he hope to have, as a minister of the Anglican Church, the authority and dignity which he had hitherto enjoyed. He would always, by a large portion of the members of that Church, be regarded as a deserter. He might, therefore, on the whole, very naturally wish to be left where he was.* There was consequently a division in the Whig party. One section of that party was for relieving the dissenters from the Test Act, and giving up the Comprehension Bill. Another sec- tion was for pushing forward the Comprehension Bill, and post- poning to a more convenient time the consideration of the Test * Tom Brown says, in his scurrilous way, of the Presbyterian divines of that time, that their preaching " brings in money, and money buys land ; and land is an amusement they all desire, in spite of their hypocritical cant. If it were not for the quarterly contributions, there would be no longer schism or separation." He asks how it can be imagined that, while " they are maintained like gentlemen by the breach, they will ever preach up healing doctrines ? " Brown's Amuse- ments, Serous and Comical. Some curious instances of the influence exercised by the chief dissenting ministers may be found in Hawkins's Life of Johnson. In the Journal of the retired citizen (Spectator, 317.) Addison has indulged in some exquisite pleasantry on this subject. ^ The Mr. Nisby whose opinions about the peace, the Grand Vizier, and laced coffee, are quoted with so much respect, and who is so well regaled with marrow bones, ox cheek, and a bottle of Brooks and Hellier, was John Nesbit, a highly popular preacher, who, about the time of the Revolution, became pastor of a dissenting congregation in Hare Court, Aldersgate Street. In Wilson's History and Antiquities of Dissenting Churches and Meeting Houses in London, Westminister, and Southwark, will be found several instances of noncomformist. preachers who, about this time, made hand- oni': fortunes, generally, it should seem, by marriage. WILLIAM AND MARY. 99 Act. The effect of this division among the friends of religious liberty was that the High Churchmen, though a minority in the House of Commons and not a majority in the House of Lords, were able to oppose with success both the reforms which they dreaded. The Comprehension Bill was not passed ; and the Test Act was not repealed. Just at the moment when the question of the Test and the question of the Comprehension became complicated together in a manner which might well perplex an enlightened and honest politician, both questions became complicated with a third ques- tion of great importance. The ancient oaths of allegiance and supremacy contained some expressions which had always been disliked by the Whigs, and other expressions which Tories, honestly attached to the new settlement, thought inapplicable to princes who had not the hereditary right. The convention had therefore, while the throne was still vacant, framed those oaths of allegiance and supremacy by which we still testify our loyalty to our Sover- eign. By the Act which turned the Convention into a Parlia- ment, the members of both Houses were required to take the new oaths. As to other persons in public trust, it was hard to say how the law stood. One form of words was enjoined by statutes, regularly passed, and not yet regularly abrogated. A different form was enjoined by the Declaration of Right, an in- strument which was indeed revolutionary and irregular, but which might well be thought equal in authority to any statute. The practice was in as much confusion as the law. It was therefore felt to be necessary that the legislature should, without delay, pass an Act abolishing the old oaths, and deter- mining when and by whom the new oaths should be taken. The bill which settled this important question originated in the Upper House. As to most of the provisions there was little room for dispute. It was unan'~ usly agreed that no person should, at any future time, be admitted to any office, civil, mili- tary, ecclesiastical, or academical, without taking the oaths to William and Mary. It was also unanimously agreed that every person who already held any civil or military office should be 100 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ejected from it, unless he took the oaths on or before the first of August 1G89. But the strongest passions of both parties were excited by the question whether persons who already possessed ecclesiastical or academical offices should be required to swear fealty to the King and Queen on pain of deprivation. None could say what might be the effect of a law enjoining all the members of a great, a powerful, a sacred profession to make, under the most solemn sanction of religion, a declaration which might be plausibly represented as a formal recantation of all that they had been writing and preaching during many years. The Primate and some of the most eminent Bishops had a! ready absented themselves from Parliament, and would doubtless re- linquish their palaces and revenues, rather than acknowledge the new Sovereigns. The example of these great prelates might perhaps be followed by a multitude of divines of humbler rank, by hundreds of canons, prebendaries, and fellows of colleges, by thousands of parish priests. To such an event no Tory, how- ever clear his own conviction that he might lawfully swear alle- giance to the King who was in possession, could look forward without the most painful emotions pf compassion for the suf- ferers and of anxiety for the Church. There were some persons who went so far as to deny that the Parliament was competent to pass a law requiring a Bishop to swear on pain of deprivation. No earthly power, they said, could break the tie which bound the successor of the apostles to his diocese. What God had joined no man could sunder. Kings and senates might scrawl words on parchment or impress figures on wax ; but those words and figures could no more change the course of the spiritual than the course of the physical world. As the Author of the universe had appointed a certain order, according to which it was His pleasure to send winter and summer, seedtime and harvest, so He had appointed a cer- tain order, according to which He communicated His grace to His Catholic Church ; and the latter order was, like the former, independent of the powers and principalities of the world. A legislature might alter the names of the months, might call June December, and December June ; but in spite of the legis- WILLIAM AND MARY. 101 lature, the snow would fall when the sun was m Capricorn, and the flowers would bloom when he was in Cancer. And so the legislature might enact that Ferguson or Muggleton should live in the palace at Lambeth, should sit on the throne of Au- gustii), should be called Yo*ur Grace, and should walk in proces- sions before the Premier Duke : but, in spite of the legislature, Saucroft would, while Bancroft lived, be the only true Archbishop of Canterbury : and the person who should presume to usurp the archiepiscopal functions would be a schismatic. This doctrine was proved by reasons drawn from the budding of Aaron's rod, and from a certain plate which Saint James the Less, according to a legend of the fourth century, used to wear on his forehead. A Greek manuscript, relating to the deprivation of bishops, was dis- covered, about this time, in the Bodleian Library, and became the subject of a furious controversy. One party held that God had wonderfully brought this precious volume to light, for the guid- ance of His Church at a most critical moment. The other party wondered that any importance could be attached to the nonsense of a nameless scribbler of the thirteenth century. Much was written about/ihe deprivations of Chrysostom and Phothis, of Nicolaus Mysticus and Cosmas Atticus. But the case of Abiathar, whom Solomon put out of the sacerdotal oiHce for treason, was discussed with peculiar eagerness. No small quantity of learning and ingenuity was expended in the attempt to prove that Abiathar, though he wore the ephod and answered by Urim, was not really High Priest, that he ministered only when his superior Zadoc was incapacitated by sickness or by some ceremonial pollution, and that therefore the act of Solomon was not a precedent which would warrant King AVilliam in de- posing a real Bishop.* But such reasoning as this, though backed by copious citations from the Misna and Maimonides, was not generally satisfactory even to zealous churchmen. For it admitted of * See, among many other tracts Dodwell's Cautionary Discourses, liis Vindi- cation of the Deprived Bishops, his Defence of the Vindication, and his Parse- nesis ; and Bisby's Unity of Priesthood, printed in 1692. See also Hody's tracts on the other side, the Baroccian MS., and Solomon and Abiathar, a Dialogue between Eucheres and Dyscheres. 102 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. one answer, short, but perfectly intelligible to a plain man" who knew nothing about Greek fathers or Levitical genealogies. There might be some doubt whether King Solomon had ejected a high priest: but there could be no doubt at all that Queen Elizabeth had ejected the Bishops'of more than half the sees in England. It was notorious that fourteen prelates had, with- out any proceeding in any spiritual court, been deprived by Act of Parliament for refusing to acknowledge her supremacy. Had that deprivation been null ? Had Bonner continued to be, to the end of his life, the only true Bishop of London ? Had his successor been an usurper ? Had Parker and Jewel been schismatics ? Had the Convocation of 1562, that Convocation which had finally settled the doctrine of the Church of England, been itself out of the pale of the Church of Christ ? Nothing could be more ludicrous than the distress of those controversial- ists who had to invent a plea for Elizabeth which should not be also a plea for William. Some zealots, indeed, gave up the vain attempt to distinguish between two cases which every man of common sense perceived to be undistinguishable, and frankly owned that the deprivations of 1559 could not be justified. But no person, it was said, ought to be troubled in mind on that account ; for, though the Church of England might once have been schismatical, she had become Catholic when the last of the Bishops deprived by Elizabeth ceased to live.* The Tories, however, were not generally disposed to admit that the religious society to which they were fondly attached had originated in an unlawful breach of unity. They therefore took ground lower and more tenable. They argued the question as a question of humanity and of expediency. They spoke much of the debt of gratitude which the nation owed to the priesthood ; of the cour- age and fidelity with which the order, from the primate down to the youngest deacon, had recently defended the civil and ecclesiastical constitution of the realm; of the memorable Sun- day when, in all the hundred churches of the capital, scarcely * Burnet, ii. 135. Of all attempts to distinguish between the deprivations of 1559 and the deprivations of lf!89. the most absurd was made by Dodwell. See his doctrine of the Church of England concerning the Independency of the Clergy on the lay Power, 1697. WILLIAM AND MART. 103 one slave could be found to read the Declaration of Indulgence ; of the black Friday when, amidst the blessings and the loud weeping of a mighty population, the barge of the seven prelates passed through the Watergate of the Tower. The firmness with which the clergy had lately, in defiance of menace and of seduc- tion, done what they conscientiously believed to be right, had saved the liberty and religion of England. Was no indulgence to be granted to them if they now refused to do what they con- scientiously apprehended to be wrong? And where, it was said, is the danger of treating them with tenderness ? Nobody is so absurd as to propose that they shall be permitted to plot against the Government, or to stir up the multitude to insurrec- tion. They are amenable to the law, like other men. If they are guilty of treason, let them be hanged. If they are guilty of sedition, let them be fined and imprisoned. If they omit, in their public ministrations, to pray for King William, for Queen Mary, and for the Parliament assembled under those most religious sovereigns, let the penal clauses of the Act of Uni- formity be put in force. If this be not enough, let His Majesty be empowered to tender the oaths to any clergyman ; and, if the oaths so tendered are refused, let deprivation follow. In this way any nonjuring bishop or rector who may be puspected, though he cannot be legally convicted, of intriguing, of writing, of talking, against the present settlement, may be at once re- moved from his office. But why insist on ejecting a pious and laborious minister of religion, who never lifts a finger or utters a word against the government, and who, as often as he per- forms morning or evening service, prays from his heart for a blessing on the rulers set over him by Providence, but who will not take an oath which seems to him to imply a right in the people to depose a sovereign ? Surely we do all that is neces- sary if we leave men of this sort at the mercy of the very prince to whom they refuse to swear fidelity. If he is willing to bear with their scrupulosity, if he considers them, notwithstanding their prejudices, as innocent and useful members of society, who else can be entitled to complain ? The Whigs were vehement on the other side. They scru- 104 ' HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tinized, with ingenuity sharpened by hatred, the claims of the clergy to the public gratitude, and sometimes went so far as altogether to deny that the order had in the preceding year deserved well of the nation. It was true that bishops and priests had stood up against the tyranny of the late King : hut it was equally true that, but for the obstinacy with which they had opposed the Exclusion Bill, he never would have been King, and that, but for their adulation and their doctrine of passive obedience, he would never have ventured to be guilty of such tyranny. Their chief business, during a quarter of a century, had been to teach the people to cringe and the prince to domineer. They were guilty of the blood of Russell, of Sidney, of every brave and honest Englishman who had been put to death for attempting to save the realm from Popery and despotism. Never had they breathed a whisper against arbitrary power till arbitrary power began to menace their own property and dignity. Then, no doubt, forgetting all their old commonplaces about submitting to Nero, they had made haste to save themselves. Grant, such was the cry of these eager disputants, grant that, in saving themselves, they saved the constitution. Are we therefore to forget that they had previously endangered it ? And are we to reward them by now permitting them to destroy it ? Here is a class of men closely connected with the state. A large part of the produce of the soil has been assigned to them for their maintenance. Their chiefs have seats iu the legisla- ture, wide domains, stately palaces. By this privileged body the great mass of the population is lectured every week from the chair of authority. To this privileged body has been com- mitted the supreme direction of liberal education. Oxford and Cambridge, Westminster, "Winchester, and Eton, are under priestly government. By the priesthood will to a great extent be formed the character of the nobility and gentry of the next generation. Of the higher clergy some have in their gift numerous and valuable benefices ; others have the privilege of appointing judges who decide grave questions affecting the liberty, the property, the reputation of Their Majesties' subjects. And is an order thus favoured by the state to give no guarantee WILLIAM AND MARY. 105 to the state ? On what principle can it be contended that it is unnecessary to ask from an Archbishop of Canterbury or from a Bishop of Durham that promise of fidelity to the government which all allow that it is necessary to demand from every lay- man who serves the Crown in the humblest office ? Every exciseman, every collector of the customs, who refuses to swear, is to be deprived of his bread. For these humble martyrs of passive obedience and hereditary right nobody has a word to say. Yet an ecclesiastical magnate who refuses to swear is to be suffered to retain emoluments, patronage, power, equal to those of a great minister of state. It is said that it is superfluous to impose the oaths on a clergyman, because he may be punished if he breaks the law. Why is not the same argument urged in favour of the layman? And why, if the clergyman really means to observe the laws, does he scruple to take the oaths ? The law commands him to designate William and Mary as King and Queen, to do this in the most sacred place, to do this in the administration of the most solemn of all the rites of religion. The law commands him to pray that the illustrious pair may be defended by a special providence, that they may be victorious over every enemy, and that their Parliament may by divine guidance be led to take such a course as may promote their safety, honour and welfare. Can we believe that his conscience will suffer him to do all this, and yet will not suffer him to promise that he will be a faithful subject to them ? To the proposition that the nonjuring clergy should be left to the mercy of the King, the Whigs, with some justice, replied that no scheme could be devised more unjust to His Majesty. The matter, they said, is one of public concern, one in which every Englishman who is unwilling to be the slave of France arid of Home has a deep interest. In such a case it would be un- worthy of the Estates of the Realm to shrink from the responsi- bility of providing for the common safety, to try to obtain for themselves the praise of tenderness and liberality, and to leave to the Sovereign the odious task of proscription. A law requir- ing all public functionaries, civil, military, ecclesiastical, without distinction of persons, to take the oaths is at least equal. It 106 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. excludes all suspicion of partiality, of personal malignity, of secret spying and talebearing. But, if an arbitrary discretion, is left to the Government, if one nonjuring priest is suffered to keep a lucrative benefice while another is turned with his wife and children into the street, every ejection will be considered as an act of cruelty, and will be imputed as a crime to the sovereign and his ministers.* Thus the Parliament had to decide, at the same moment, what quantity of relief should be granted to the consciences of nonconformists and what quantity of pressure should be applied to the consciences of the clergy of the Established Church. The King conceived a hope that it might be in his power to effect a compromise agreeable to all parties. He flattered himself that the Tories might be induced to make some concession to the dissenters, on condition that the Whigs would be lenient to the Jacobites. He determined to try what his personal intervention would effect. It chanced that, a few hours after the Lords had read the Comprehension Bill a second time and the Bill touch- ing the Oaths a first time, he had occasion to go down to Par- liament for the purpose of giving his assent to a law. From the throne he addressed both Houses, and expressed an earnest wish that they would consent to modify the existing laws in such a manner that all Protestants might be admitted to public employ- ment.! It was well understood that he was willing, if the legislature would comply with his request, to let clergymen who were already beneficed continue to hold their benefices without swearing allegiance to him. His conduct on this occasion deserves undoubtedly the praise of disinterestedness. It is honourable to him that he attempted to purchase liberty of con- science for his subjects by giving up a safeguard of his own crown. But it must be acknowledged that he showed Jess wis- dom than virtue. The only Englishman in his Privy Council whom he had consulted, if Burnet was correctly informed, was Richard Hampden ; $ and Richard Hampden, though a highly * As to this controversy, see Buniet, ii. 7, 8, 9 ; Grey's Debates, April 19 and 22, 168!) ; Commons' Journals of A mil 20 and 22 ; Lords' Journals, April 21. t Lords' Journals, March 16 1689. $ Burnet, ii. 7, 8. WILLIAM AND MARY. 107 respectable man, was so far from being able to answer for the Whig party that he could not answer even for his own son John, whose temper, naturally vindictive, had been exasperated into ferocity by the stings of remorse and shame. The King soon found that there was in the hatred of the two great factions an energy which was wanting to their love. The Whigs, though they were almost unanimous in thinking that the sacramental test ought to be abolished, were by no means unanimous in thinking that moment well chosen for the abolition ; and even those Whigs who were most desirous to see the nonconformists relieved without delay from civil disabilities were fully deter- mined not to forego the opportunity of humbling and punishing the class to whose instrumentality chiefly was to be ascribed that tremendous reflux of public feeling which had followed the dissolution of the Oxford Parliament. To put the Janes, the Souths, the Sherlocks into such a situation that they must either starve, or recant, publicly, and with the Gospel at their lips, all the ostentatious professions of many years was a revenge too delicious to be relinquished. The Tory, on the other hand sincerely respected and pitied those clergymen who felt scruples about the oaths. But the Test was, in his view, essential to the safety of the established religion, and must not be surrendered for the purpose of saving any man however eminent from any hardship however serious. It would be a sad day doubtless for the Church when the episcopal bench, the chapter houses of cathedrals, the halls of colleges, would miss some men renowned for piety and learning. But it would be a still sadder day for the church when an Independent should bear the white staff or a Baptist sit on the woolsack. Each party tried to serve those for whom it was interested : but neither party would consent to grant favourable terms to its enemies. The result was that the nonconformists remained excluded from office in the State, and the nonjurors were ejected from office in the Church. In the House of Commons, no member thought it expedient to propose the repeal of the Test Act. But leave was given to bring in a bill repealing the Corporation Act, which had been 108 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. passed by the Cavalier Parliament soon after the Restoration, and which contained a clause requiring all municipal magistrates to receive the sacrament according to the forms of the Church of England. When this bill was about to be committed, it was moved by the Tories that the committee should be instructed to make no alteration in the law touching the sacrament. Those Whigs who were zealous for the Comprehension must have been placed by this motion in an embarrassing position. To vote for the instruction would have been inconsistent with their princi- ples. To vote against it would have been to break with Not- tingham. A middle course was found. The adjournment of the debate was moved and carried by a hundred and sixteen votes to a hundred and fourteen ; and the subject was not revived.* In the House of Lords a motion was made for the abolition of the sacramental test, but was rejected by a large majority. Many of those who thought the motion right in principle thought it ill timed. A protest was entered ; but it was signed only by a few peers of no great authority. It is a remarkable fact that two great chiefs of the Whig party, who were in general very attentive to their parliamentary duty, Devonshire and Shrews- bury, absented themselves on this occasion. f The debate on the Test in the Upper House was speedily followed by a debate on the last clause of the Comprehension Bill. By that clause it was provided that thirty Bishops and priests should be commissioned to revise the liturgy and canons, and to suggest amendments. On this subject the Whig peers were almost all of one mind. They mustered strong and spoke warmly. Why, they asked, were none but members of the sacerdotal order to be entrusted with this duty ? Were the laity no part of the Church of England? When the Commission should have made its report, laymen would have to decide on the recommendations contained in that report. Not a line of * Bnrnet f=ays (ii. 8), that the proposition to abolish the sacramental test was rejected by a rr-at majority in both Houses. But his memory deceived him; for the only division on the subject in the House of Commons was that mentioned in the text. It is remarkable that Gwvn and Rowe, who were tellers for the majority, were two of the strongest Whigs in the House. t Lords' Journal*, i\larch21, 1689. WILLIAM AND MARY. 109 the Book of Common Prayer could be altered but by the au- thority of King, Lords, and Commons. The King was a lay- man. Five sixths of the Lords were laymen. All the members of the House of Commons were laymen. Was it not absurd to say that laymen were incompetent to examine into a matter which it was acknowledged that laymen must in the last resort deter- mine ? And could anything be more opposite to the whole spirit of Protestantism than the notion that a certain preternatural power of judging in spiritual cases was vouchsafed to a particu- lar caste, and to that caste alone ; that such men as Selden, as Hale, as Boyle, were less competent to give an opinion on a collect or a creed than the youngest and silliest chaplain who, in a remote manor house, passed his life in drinking ale and play- ing at shovelboard ? What God had instituted no earthly power, lay or clerical, could alter : and of things instituted by luimau beings a layman was surely as competent as a clergyman to judge. That the Anglican liturgy and canons were of purely human institution the Parliament acknowledged by referring them to a Commission for revision and correction. How could it then be maintained that in such a Commission the laity, so Vast a majority of the population, the laity, whose edification was the main end of all ecclesiastical regulations, and whose in- nocent tastes ought to be carefully consulted in the framing of the public services of religion, ought not to have a single repre- sentative ? Precedent was directly opposed to this odious dis- tinction. Repeatedly, since the light of reformation had dawned on England, Commissioners had been empowered by law to revise the canons ; and on every one of those occasions some of the Commissioners had been laymen. In the present case the pro- posed arrangement was peculiary objectionable. For the ob- ject of issuing the commission was the conciliating of dissenters ; and it was therefore most desirable that the Commissioners should be men in whose fairness and moderation dissenters could confide. Would thirty such men be easily found in the higher ranks of the clerical profession ? The duty of the legislature was to arbitrate between two contending parties, the Nonconform- ist divines and the Anglican divines, aud it would be the gross- 110 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. est injustice to commit to one of thoss parties the office of um- pire. On these grounds the Whigs proposed an amendment to the feffect that laymen should be joined with clergymen in the Commission. The contest was sharp. Burnet, who had just taken his seat among the peers, and who seems to have been bent on winning at almost any price the good will of his brethren, argued with all his constitutional warmth for the clause as it stood. The numbers on the division proved to be exactly equal. The consequence was that, according to the rules of the House, the amendment was lost.* At length the Comprehension Bill was sent down to the Commons, There it would easily have been carried by two to one, if it had been supported by all the friends of religious liberty. But on this subject the High Churchmen could count on the support of a large body of Low Churchmen. Those members who wished well to Nottingham's plan saw that they were outnumbered, and, despairing of a victory, be- gan to meditate a retreat. Just at this time a suggestion was thrown out which united all suffrages. The ancient usage was that a Convocation should be summoned together C7 3 with a Parliament ; and it might well be argued that, if ever the advice of a Convocation could be needed, it must be when changes in the ritual and discipline of the Church were under consideration. But, in consequence of the irregular manner in which the Estates of the Realm had been brought together during the vacancy of the throne, there was no Convocation. It was proposed that the House should advise the King to take measures for supplying this defect, and that the fate of the Comprehension Bill should not be decided till the clergy had had an opportunity of declaring their opinion through the ancient and legitimate organ. This proposition was received with general acclamation. The Tories were well pleased to see such honour done to the priesthood. Those Whigs who were against the Compre- hension Bill were well pleased to see it laid aside, certainly * Lords' Journals, April 5, 1689 ; Buriiet ii. 10. WILLIAM AND MART. Ill for a year, probably for ever. Those Whigs who were for the Comprehension Bill were well pleased to escape without a de- feat. Some of them indeed were not without hopes that mild and liberal counsels might prevail in the ecclesiastical senate. An address requesting William to summon the Convocation was voted without a division : the concurrence of the Lords was asked : the Lords concurred : the address was carried up to the throne by both Houses: the King promised that he would, at a convenient season, do what his Parliament desired ; and Nottingham's bill was not again mentioned. Many writers, imperfectly acquainted with the history of that age, have inferred from these proceedings that the House of Commons was an assembly of High Churchmen : but nothing is more certain than that two thirds of the members were either Low Churchmen or not Churchmen at all. A very few days before this time an occurrence had taken place unimportant in itself, but highly significant as an indication of the temper of the majority. It had been suggested that the House ought, in conformity with ancient usage, to ad- journ over the Easter holidays. The Puritans and Latitu- dinarians objected : there was a sharp debate : the High Churchmen did not venture to divide ; and to the great scandal of many grave persons, the Speaker took the chair at nine o'clock on Easter Monday ; and there was a long and busy sitting.* This however was by no means the strongest proof which, the Commons gave that they were far indeed from feeling ex- treme reverence or tenderness for the Anglican hierarchy. The bill for settling the oaths had just come down from the Lords Commons' Journals, March 28, April 1, 1689 ; Paris Gazette, April 23. Part of the passage in the Paris Gazette is worth quoting. " II y cut, ce jour 1& (March 28), une grande contestation dans la Chambre Basse, sur la proposition qui fut faite de remettre les seances apres les f&tes de Pasques observe'es tou- jours par 1'Eglise Anglicane. Les Protestans eonformistes furent de cet avis ; et les Pre.sbyteriens emporterent a la pluralite des voix que les seances recom- menceroient le Lundy, seconde feste de Pasques." The Low Churchmen are frequently designated as Presbyterians by the French and Dutch writers of that aae. There were not twenty Presbyterians, properly HO called, in the House of Commons. See A Smith aud Cutler's plain Dialogue about Whig and Tory, 1090. 112 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. framed in a manner favourable to the clergy. All lay function- aries were required to swear fealty to the King and Queen on pain of expulsion from office. But it was provided that every divine who already held a benefice might continue to hold it without swearing, unless the Government should see reason to call on him specially for an assurance of his loyalty. Burnet had, partly, no doubt, from the goodnature and generosity which belonged to his character, and partly from a desire to conciliate his brethren, supported this arrangement in the Upper House with great energv- But in the Lower House the feeling against the Jacobite priests was irresistibly strong. On the very day on which that House voted, without a division, the address requesting the King to summon the Convocation, a clause was proposed and carried which required every person who held any ecclesiastical or academical preferment to take the oaths by the first of August 1 689, on pain of suspension. Six months to be reckoned from that day, were allowed to the non juror for reconsideration. If, on the first of February 1690, he still continued obstinate, he was to be finally deprived. The bill, thus amended, was sent back to the Lords. The Lords adhered to their original resolution. Conference after conference was held. Compromise after compromise was sug- gested. From the imperfect reports which have come down to us it appears that every argument in favour of lenity was forcibly urged by Burnet. But the Commons were firm : time pressed : the unsettled state of the law caused inconvenience in every department of the public service ; and the Peers very reluctantly gave way. They at the same time added a clause, empowering the King to bestow pecuniary allowances out of the forfeited benefices on a few nonjuring clergymen. The number of clergymen thus favoured was not to exceed twelve. The allowance was not to exceed one-third of the income for- feited. Some zealous Whigs were unwilling to grant even this indulgence ; but the Commons were content with the victory which they had won, and justly thought that it would be ungracious to refuse so slight a concession.* * Accounts of what passed at the Conferences will be found in the Journals f the Houses and deserve to be read. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 113 These debates were interrupted, during a short time, by the solemnities and festivities of the Coronation. When the day fixed for that great ceremony drew near, the House of Com- mons resolved itself into a committee for the purpose of settling the form of words in which our Sovereigns were thenceforward to enter into covenant with the nation. All parties were agreed as to the propriety of requiring the King to swear that, in tem- poral matters, he would govern according to law, and would execute justice in mercy. But about the terms of the oath which related to the spiritual institutions of the realm there was much debate. Should the chief magistrate promise simply to maintain the Protestant religion established by law, or should he promise to maintain that religion as it should be hereafter established by law ? The majority preferred the former phrase. The latter phrase was preferred by those Whigs who were for a Comprehension. But it was admitted that the two phrases really meant the same thing, and that the oath, however it might be worded, would bind the Sovereign in his executive capacity only. This was indeed evident from the very nature of the transaction. Any compact may be annulled by the free consent of the party who alone is entitled to claim the perform- ance. It was never doubted by the most rigid casuist that a debtor, who has bound himself under the most awful impreca- tions to pay a debt, may lawfully withhold payment if the creditor is willing to cancel the obligation. And it is equally clear that no assurance, exacted from a King by the Estates of his king- dom, can bind him to refuse compliance with what may at a future time be the wish of those Estates. A bill was drawn up in conformity with the resolutions of the Committee, and was rapidly passed through every stage. After the third reading, a foolish man stood up to propose a rider, declaring that the oath was not meant to restrain the Sovereign from consenting to any change in the ceremonial of the Church, provided always that episcopacy and a written form of prayer were retained. The gross absurdity of this motion was exposed by several eminent members. Such a clause, they justly remarked, would bind the King under pre- VOL. III. 8 114 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tence of setting him free. The coronation oath, they said, was never intended to trammel him in his legislative capacity. Leave that oath as it is now drawn, and no prince can misunder- stand it. No prince can seriously imagine that the two Houses mean to exact from him a promise that he will put a Veto on laws which they may hereafter think necessary to the wellbeing of the country. Or if any prince should so strangely misappre- hend the nature of the contract between him and his subjects, any divine, any lawyer, to whose advice he may have recourse, will set his mind at ease. But if this rider should pass, it will be impossible to deny that the coronation oath is meant to pre- vent the King from giving his assent to bills which may be presented to him by the Lords and Commons ; and the most serious inconveniencies may follow. These arguments were felt to be unanswerable, and the proviso was rejected without a division.* Every person who has read these debates must be fully con- vinced that the statesmen who framed the coronation oath did not mean to bind the King in his legislative capacity. f Un- happily, more than a hundred years later, a scruple, which those statesmen thought too absurd to be seriously entertained by any human being, found its way into a mind, honest, indeed, and re- ligious, but narrow and obstinate by nature, and at once debili- tated and excited by disease. Seldom, indeed, have the ambi- tion and perfidy of tyrants produced evils greater than those * Journals, March 28, 1689 ; Grey's Debates. t I will quote some expressions which have been preserved in the concise reports of these debates. Those expressions are quite decisive as to the sense in which the oath was understood by the legislators who framed it. Musgrave said, " There is no occasion for this proviso. It cannot be imagined that any bill from hence will ever distroy the legislative powor. " Finch said, " The words, ' estab- lished by law,' hinder not the king from parsing any bill for the relief of Dissen- ters. The proviso makes the scruple, and gives the occasion for it." Sawyer snid, "This is the first proviso of this nature that ever was in any bill. It seems to strike at the legislative power." Sir Robert Cotton said. " Though the proviso looks well and healing, yet it seems to imply a defect. Not able to alter laws as occasion requires ! This, instead of one scruple, raises more, as if you were so bound up to the ecclesiastical government that you cannot make any new laws without such a proviso." Sir Thomas Lee said, " It will, I fear, creep in that other laws cannot be made without such a proviso : therefore I would lay it aside." WILLIAM AND MART. 115 which were brought on our country by that fatal conscientious- ness. A conjuncture singularly auspicious, a conjuncture at which wisdom and justice might perhaps have reconciled races and sects long hostile, and might have made the British Islands one truly United Kingdom, was suffered to pass away. The opportunity, once lost, returned no more. Two generations of public men have since laboured with imperfect success to repair the error which was then committed ; nor is it improbable that some of the penalties of that error may continue to afflict a re- mote posterity. The bill by which the oath was settled passed the Upper House without amendment. All the preparations were complete ; and, on the eleventh of April, the coronation took place. In some things it differed from ordinary coronations. The repre- sentatives of the people attended the ceremony in a body, and were sumptuously feasted in the Exchequer Chamber. Mary, being not merely Queen Consort, but also Queen Regnant, was inaugurated in all things like a King, was girt with the sword, lifted up into tli3 throne, and presented with the Bible, the spurs, and the orb. Of the temporal grandees of the realm, and of their wives and daughters, the muster was great and splen- did. None could be surprised that the Whig aristocracy should swell the triumph of Whig principles. But the Jacobites saw, with concern, that many Lords who had voted for a Regency bore a conspicuous part in the ceremonial. The King's crown was carried by Grafton, the Queen's by Somerset. The pointed sword, emblematical of temporal justice, was borne by Pem- broke. Ormond was Lord High Constable for the day, and rode up the hall on the right hand of the hereditary champion, who thrice flung down his glove on the pavement, and thrice de- fied to mortal combat the false traitor who should gainsay the title of William and Mary. Among the noble damsels who supported the gorgeous train of the Queen was her beautiful and gentle cousin, the Lady Henrietta Hyde, whose father, Rochester, had to the last contended against the resolution which declared the throne vacant.* The show of Bishops, indeed was scanty. Lady Henrietta, whom her uncle Clarendon calls " pretty little Lady Hen- 116 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. The Primate did not make his appearance and his place was supplied by Compton. On one side of Compton, the paten was carried by Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, eminent among the seven confessors of the preceding year. On the other side, Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, lately a member of the High Com- mission, had charge of the chalice. Burnet, the junior prelate, preached with all his wonted ability, and more than his wonted taste and judgment. His grave and eloquent discourse was polluted neither by flattery nor by malignity. He is said to have been greatly applauded ; and it may well be believed that the animated peroration in which he implored heaven to bless the royal pair with long life and mutual love, with obedient subjects, wise counsellors, and faithful allies, with gallant fleets and armies, with victory, with peace, and finally with crowns more glorious and more durable than those which then glittered on the altar of the Abbey, drew forth the loudest hums of the Commons.* On the whole, the ceremony went off well, and produced something like a revival, faint, indeed, and transient, of the enthusiasm of the preceding December. The day was, in Lpn- don, and in many other places, a day of general rejoicing. The churches were filled in the morning : the afternoon was spent in sport and carousing ; and at night bonfires were kindled, rockets discharged, and windows lighted up. The Jacobites however contrived to discover or to invent abundant matter for scurrility and sarcasm. They complained bitterly that the way from the hall to the western door of the Abbey had been lined by Dutch soldiers. Was it seemly that an English king should enter into the most solemn of engagements with the English nation behind a triple hedge~of foreign swords and bayonets ? Little affrays, such as, at every great pageant, almost inevitably take place between those who are eager to see the show and those whose rietta." and " the best child in the world " (Diary, Jan. 1687-8), was soon after married to the Earl of Dalkeith, eldest son of the unfortunate Duke of Mon- mouth. * The sermon deserves to he read. See the London Gazette of April 14, 1689 ; Evelyn's Diary ; Luttrell's Diary ; and the Despatch of the Dutch Ambassadors to the States General. WILLIAM AND MARY. 117 business it is to keep the communications clear, were exaggerated with all the artifices of rhetoric. One of the alien mercenaries had backed his horse against an honest citizen who pressed forward to catch a glimpse of the royal canopy. Another had rudely pushed back a woman with the butt end of his musket. Qn such grounds as these the strangers were compared to those Lord Danes whose insolence, in the old time, had provoked the Anglosaxon population to insurrection and massacre. But there was no more fertile theme for censure than the coronation medal which really was absurd in design and mean in execution. A chariot appeared conspicuous on the reverse ; and plain people were at a loss to understand what this emblem had to do with William and Mary. The disaffected wits solved the difficulty by suggesting that the artist meant to allude to that chariot which a Roman princess, lost to all filial affection, and blindly devoted to the interests of an ambitious husband, drove over the still warm remains of her father.* * A specimen of the prose which the Jacobites wrote on this subject will be found among the Somers Tracts. The Jacobite verses were generally too loath- some to be quoted. I select some of the most decent lines from a very rare lam- poon : " The eleventh of April has'come about, To Westminster went the rabble rout, In order to crown a bundle of clouts, A dainty fine King indeed. " Descended he is from the Orange tree ; Cut, if I can icad his destiny, He'\> once more descend from another tree, A dainty fine King indeed. " ne has gotten part of the shape of a man, But more of a monkey, deny it who can ; He has the head of a goose, but the legs of a crane, A dainty fine King indeed." . A Frenchman named Le Noble, who had been banished from his own country for his crimes, but by the connivance of the police, lurked in Paris, and earned a, precarious livelihood as a bookseller's hacK, published on this occasion two pas- quinades, now extremely scarce, " Le Couronnement de Guillemot et de Guille- mette, avec le Sermon du grand DocteurBuniet," and " LeFestinde Guillemot." In wit, taste, and good sense, Le Noble's writings are not inferior to the English poem which I have quoted. He tells us that the Archbishop of York and the Bishop of London had a boxing match in the Abbey ; that the champion rode up the Hall on an ass, which turn ,d restive and kicked over the royal table with all the plate ; and that the banquet ended in a fight between the peers armed with stools and benches, and the cooks armed with spits. This sort of pleasantry, strange to say, found readers ; and the writer's portrait was pompously engraved with the motto " Latrantes ride : te tna fama manet." 118 HISTORT OF ENGLAND. Honours were, as usual, liberally bestowed at this festive season. Three garters which happened to be at the disposal of the Crown were given to Devonshire, Ormond, and Schomberg. Prince George was created Duke of Cumberland. Several eminent men took new appellations by which they must hence- forth be designated. Danby became Marquess of Caermarthen, Churchill Earl of Marlbo rough, and Bentinck Earl of Portland. Mordaunt was made Earl of Monmouth, not without some murmuring on the part of old Exclusionists, who still remem- bered with fondness their Protestant Duke, and who had hoped that his attainder would be reversed, and that his title would be borne by his descendants. It was remarked that the name of Halifax did not appear in the list of promotions. None could doubt that he might easily have obtained either a blue riband or a ducal coronet ; and, though he was honourably distinguished from most of his contemporaries by his scorn of illicit gain, it was well known that he desired honorary distinctions with a greedi- ness of which he was himself ashamed, and which was un- worthyof his fine understanding. The truth is that his ambition was at this time chilled by his fears. To those whom he trusted he hinted his apprehensions that evil times were at hand. The King's lile was not worth a year's purchase : the government was disjointed, the clergy and the army disaffected, the parlia- ment torn by factions : civil war was already raging in one part of the empire : foreign war was impending. At such a moment a minister, whether Whig or Tory, might well be uneasy : but neither Whig nor Tory had so much to fear as the Trimmer, who might not improbably find himself the common mark at which both parties would take aim. For these reasons Halifax determined to avoid all ostentation of power and influence, to disarm envy by a studied show of moderation, and to attach to himself by civilities and benefits persons whose gratitude might be useful in the event of a counterrevolution. The next three months, he said, would be the time of trial. If the government got safe through the summer it would probably stand.* * Keresby's Memoirs. WILLIAM AND MARY. 113 Meanwhile questions of external policy were every day be- coming more and more important. The work at which William had toiled indefatigably during many gloomy and anxious years was at le::gth accomplished. The great coalition was formed. It was plain that a desperate conflict was at hand. The oppres- sor of Europe would have to defend himself against England allied with Charles the Second King of Spain, with the Em- peror Leopold, and with the Germanic and Batavian federa- tions, and was likely to have no ally except the Sultan, who was waging war against the House of Austria on the Danube. Lewis had, towards the close of the preceding year, taken his enemies at a disadvantage, and had struck the first blow be- fore they were prepared to parry it. But that blow, though heavy, was not aimed at the part where it might have been mortal. Had hostilities been commenced on the Batavian frontier, William and his army would probably have been de- tained on the Continent, and James might have continued to govern England. Happily, Lewis, under an infatuation which many pious Protestants confidently ascribed to the righteous judgment of God, had neglected the point on which the fate of the whole civilised world depended, and had made a great dis- play of power, promptitude, and energy, in a quarter where the most splendid achievements could produce nothing more than an illumination and a Te Deum. A French army under the command of Marshal Duras had invaded the Palatinate and some of the neighbouring principalities. But this expedition, though it had been completely successful, and though the skill and vigour with which it had been conducted had excited gen- eral admiration, could not perceptibly affect the event of the tremendous struggle which was approaching. France would soon be attacked on every side. It would be impossible for Duras long to retain possession of the provinces which he had surprised and overrun. An atrocious thought rose in the mind of Louvois, who, in- military affairs, had the chief sway at Ver- sailles. He was a man distinguished by zeal for what he thought the public interests, by capacity, and by knowledge of all that related to the administration of war, but of a savage and obdu- 120 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. rate nature. If the cities of the Palatinate could not be re- tained, they might be destroyed. If the soil of the Palatinate was not to furnish supplies to the French, it might be so wasted that it would at least furnish no supplies to the Germans. The ironhearted statesman submitted his plan, probably with much management and with some disguise, to Lewis ; and Lewis, in an evil hour for his fame, assented. Duras received orders to turn one of the fairest regions of E-irope into a wilderness. Fifteen years had elapsed since Turenne had ravaged part of that fine country. But the ravages committed by Turenne, though they have left a deep stain on his glory, were mere sport in comparison with the horrors of this second devastation. The French commander announced to near half a million of human beings that he granted them three days of grace, and" that, within that time, they must shift for themselves. Soon the roads and fields, which then lay deep in snow, were black- ened by innumerable multitudes of men, women, and children flying from their homes. Many died of cold and hunger : but enough survived to fill the streets of all the cities of Europe with lean and squalid beggars, who had once been thriving farmers and shopkeepers. Meanwhile the work of destruction began. The flames went up from every marketplace, every hamlet, every parish church, every country seat, within the devoted provinces. The fields where the corn had been sown were ploughed up. The orchards were hewn down. No prom- ise of a harvest was left on the fertile plains near what had once been Frankenthal. Not a vine, not an almond tree, was to be seen on the slopes of the sunny hills round what had once been Heidelberg. No respect was shown to palaces, to tem- ples, to monasteries, to infirmaries, to beautiful works of art, to monuments of the illustrious dead. The farfamed castle of the Elector Palatine was turned into a heap of ruins. The adjoining hospital was sacked. The provisions, the medicines, the pallets on which the sick lay were destroyed. The very stones of which Manheim had been built were flung into the Rhine. The magnificent Cathedral of Spires perished, and with it the marble sepulchres of eight Cassars. The coffins were WILLIAM AND MARY. 121 broken open. The ashes were scattered to the winds.* Treves with its fair bridge, its Roman baths and amphitheatre, its ven- erable churches, convents, and colleges, was doomed to the same fate. But, before this last crime had been perpetrated, Lewis was recalled to a better mind by the execrations of all the neigh- bouring nations, by the silence and confusion of his flatterers, and by the expostulations of his wife. He had been more than two years secretly married to Frances de Maintenon, the gov- erness of his natural children. It would be hard to name any woman who, with so little romance in her temper, has had so much in her life. Her early years had been passed iii poverty and obscurity. Her first husband had supported himself by writ- ing burlesque farces and poems. When she attracted the notice of her sovereign, she could no longer boast of youth or beauty : but she possessed in an extraordinary degree those more lasting charms, which men of sense, whose passions age has tamed, and whose life is a life of business and care, prize most highly in a female companion. Her character was such as has been well compared to that soft green on which the eye, wearied by warm tints and glaring lights, reposes with pleasure. A just under- standing ; an inexhaustible yet never redundant flow of rational, gentle, and sprightly conversation ; a temper of which the se- renity was never for a moment ruffled ; a tact which surpassed the tact of her sex as much as the tact of her sex surpasses the tact of ours ; such were the qualities which made the widow of a buffoon first the confidential friend, and then the spouse, of the proudest and most powerful of European kings. It was said that Lewis had been with difficulty prevented by the arguments and vehement entreaties of Louvois from declaring her Queen of France. It is certain that she regarded Louvois as her ene- my. Her hatred of him, cooperating perhaps with better feel- ings, induced her to plead the cause of the unhappy people of * For the history of the devastation of the Palatinate, see the Memoirs of La Fare, Dangeau, Madame de la Fayette, Villars, and Saint Simon, and the Monthly Mercuries for March and April 1689. The pamphlets and broadsides are too numerous to quote. One broadside, entitled " A true Acco-mt of the barbarous Cruelties committed by the French in the Palatinate in January and February last," is perhaps the most remarkable. 122 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the Rhine. She appealed to those sentiments of compassion which, though weakened by many corrupting influences, were not altogether extinct in her husband's mind, and to those sen- timents of religion which had too often impelled him to cruelty, "but which, on the present occasion, were on.theside of humanity. He relented ; and Treves was spared.* In truth he could hardly fail to perceive that he had committed a great error. The de- vastation of the Palatinate, while it had not in any sensible degree lessened the power of his enemies, had inflamed their animosity, and had furnished them with inexhaustible matter for invective. The cry of vengeance rose on every side. What- ever scruple either branch of the House of Austria might have felt about coalescing with Protestants was completely removed. It was in vain that Lewis accused the Emperor and the Cath- olic King of having betrayed the cause of the Church ; of having allied themselves with an usurper who was the avowed champion of the great schism ; of having been accessary to the foul wrong done to a lawful sovereign who was guilty of no crime but zeal for the true religion. It was in vain that James sent to Vienna and Madrid piteous letters, in which he recount- ed his misfortunes, and imolored the assistance of his brother kings, his brethren also m the faith, against the unnatural children and the rebellious subjects who had driven him into exile. There was little difficulty in framing a plausible an- swer both to the reproaches of Lewis and to the supplications of James. Leopold and Charles declared that they had not, even for purposes of just selfdefence, leagued themselves with heretics, till their enemy had, for purposes of unjust aggression, leagued himself with Mahometans. Nor was this the worst. The French King, not content with assisting the Moslem against the Christians, was himself treating Christians with a barbarity which would have shocked the very Moslem. His infidel allies, to do them justice, had not perpetrated on the Danube such outrages against the edifices and the members of the Holy Cath- olic Church as he who called himself the eldest son of that Church was perpetrating on the Rhine. On these grounds, the * Memoirs of Saint Simon. WILLIAM AND MART. 123 princes to whom James had appealed replied by appealing, with many professions of good will and compassion, to himself. He was surely too just to blame them for thinking that it was their first duty to defend their own people against such outrages as had turned the Palatinate into a desert, or for calling in the aid of Protestants against an enemy who had not scrupled to call in the aid of Turks.* During the winter and the earlier part of the spring, the powers hostile to France were gathering their strength for a great effort, and were in constant communication with one another. As the season for military operations approached, the solemn appeals of injured nations to the God of battles came forth in rapid succession. The manifesto of the Germanic body appeared in February ; that of the States General in March ; that of the House of Brandenburg in April ; and that of Spain in May.| Here, as soon as the ceremony of the coronation was over, the House of Commons determined to take into consideration the late proceedings of the French King.J In the debate, that hatred of the powerful, unscrupulous, and imperious Lewis, which had, during twenty years of vassalage, been festering in the hearts of Englishmen, broke violently forth. He was called the most Christian Turk, the most Christian ravager of Chris- tendom, the most Christian barbarian who had perpetrated on * I will quote a few lines from Leopold's letter to James : " Ktinc p.utem quo loco res iiostne Bint, ut Serenitati vestrse auxiliuni prsestari possit a nob is, qui non Turcico tantum bello implicit!, sed insuper etiam crudelissi::io et i::iqi;i3- Bimo a Gallis, rerum suarum, ut putabant, in Anglia securis, contra datavn fidem impediti sumus, ipsimet Serenitati vestne judicandum relinquimus. . . . Gr.lli non tantum in nostrum et totius Christianas orbis pemiciem fcedilraga anna cum juratis Sanctae Crucis hostibus sociare fas sibi ducunt ; Bed etiam in imperio, perfidiam perfidia cumulando, urbes deditioue occupatas contra datani fidem iinmensis tributis exhaurire, exhaustas, diripere, direptas funditus e^scindere ant flammisdelere, palatia principum ab omni antiquitate inter saevissima bel- lorum incendia intacta servata exurere, templa spoliare, dedititios in servitutem more apud barbaros tisitato abducere, denique passim, imprimis vero etiam in Catholicorum ditionibus, alia horrenda, et ipsam Turcorum tyrannidein super- antia immanitatis et saevitiae exempla edere pro ludohabent." t See the London Gazettes of Feb. 25, March 11, April 22, May 2, and the Monthly Mercuries. Some of the Declarations will be found iu Dumont's Corps Universel Diplomatiqne. t Commons' Journals, April 15, 16, 1689. 124 HISTORY OF ENGLAND.. Christians outrages of which his iufidel allies would have been ashamed.* A committee, consisting chiefly of ardent Whigs, was appointed to prepare an address. John Hampden, the most ardent Whig among them, was put into the chair ; and he produced a composition too long, too rhetorical, and too vitupera- tive, to suit the lips of the Speaker or the ears of the King. Invectives against Lewis might perhaps, in the temper in which the House then was, have passed without censure, if they had not been accompanied by severe reflections on the character and administration of Charles the Second, whose memory, in spite of all his faults, was affectionately cherished by the Tories. There were some very intelligible allusions to Charles's dealings with the Court at Versailles, and to the foreign woman whom that Court had sent to lie like a snake in his bosom. The House was with good reason dissatisfied. The address was recommitted, and, having been made more concise, and less de- clamatory and acrimonious, was approved and presented. f William's attention was called to the wrongs which France had done to him and to his kingdom ; and he was assured that, whenever he should resort to arms for the redress of those wrongs, he should be heartily supported by his people. He thanked the Commons warmly. Ambition, he said, should never induce him to draw the sword : but he had no choice : France had already attacked England ; and it was necessary to exercise the right of self-defence. A few days later war was proclaimed. J Of the grounds of quarrel alleged by the Commons in their address, and by the King in his manifesto, the most serious was* the interference of Lewis in the affairs of Ireland. In that country great events had, during several months, followed one another in rapid succession. Of those events it is now time to relate the history, a history dark with crime and sorrow, yet full of interest and instruction. * Oldmixon. t Commons' Journals, April 19, 24, 26, 1689. $ The declaration is dated on the 7th of May, but waa not published In the London Gazette till the 13th. YTILLIAM AND MARY. 125 CHAPTER XII. WILLIAM haJ assumed, together with the title of King of Eng- land, the title of King of Ireland. For all our jurists then re- garded Ireland as a mere colony, more important indeed than Massachusetts, Virginia, or Jamaica, but, like Massachusetts, Virginia, and Jamaica, dependent on the mother country, and bound to pay allegiance to the Sovereign whom the* mother country had called to the throne.* In fact, however, the Revolution found Ireland emancipated from the dominion of the English colony. As early as the year 1GHG, James had determined to make that island a place of arms which might overawe Great Britain, and a place of refuge where, if any disaster happened in Great Britain, the members of his Church might find refuge. With this view he had exerted all his power for the purpose of inverting the relation between the conquerors and the aboriginal population. The execution of his design he had entrusted, in spite of the remonstrances of his English counsellors, to the .Lord Deputy Tyrconnel. In the autumn of 1688, the process was complete. The highest offices in the state, in the army, and in the Courts of Justice, were, with scarcely an exception, filled by Papists. A pettifogger named Alexander Fitton, who had been detected in forgery, who had been fined for misconduct by the House of Lords at West- minster, who had been many years in prison, and who was equally deficient in legal knowledge and in the natural good sense and acuteness by which the want of legal knowledge has jometimes been supplied, was Lord Chancellor. His single merit was that he had apostatised from the Protestant religion ; * The general opinion of the English on this (subject is clearly expressed in a little tract entitled " Aphorisms relating to the Kingdom of Ireland," which ap- peared during the vacancy of the throne. 126 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. and this merit was thought sufficient to wash out even the stain of his Saxon extraction. He soon proved himself worthy of the confidence of his patrons. On the bench of justice he de- clared that there was not one heretic in forty thousand who was not a villain. He often, after hearing a cause in which the interests of his Church were concerned, postponed his decision, for the purpose, as he avowed, of consulting his spiritual direc- tor, a Spanish priest, well read doubtless in Escobar.* Thomas Nugent, a Roman Catholic who had never distinguished him- self at the bar except by his brogue and his blunders, was Chief Justice of the King's Bench. f Stephen Rice, a Roman Catholic, whose abilities and learning were not disputed even by the enemies of his nation and religion, but whose known hostil- ity to the Act of Settlement excited the most painful apprehen- sions in the minds of all who held property under that Act, was Chief Baron of the Exchequer. $ Richard Nagle, an acute and well read lawyer, who had been educated in a Jesuit col- lege, and whose prejudices were such as might have been ex- pected from his education, was Attorney General. Keating, a highly respectable Protestant, was still Chief Justice of the Common Pleas : but two Roman Catholic Judges sate with him. It ought to be added that one of those judges, Daly, was a mau of sense, moderation, and integrity. The matters however which came before the Court of Common Pleas were not of great moment. Even the King's Bench was at this time almost deserted. The Court of Exchequer over- flowed with business ; for it was the only court at Dublin from which no writ of error lay to England, and consequently the only court in which the English could be oppressed and pil- laged without hope of redress. Rice, it was said, had declared that they should have from him exactly what the law, construed with the utmost strictness, gave them, and nothing more. What, * King's State of the Protestants of Ireland, ii. C. and iii. 3. t King, iii. 3. Clarendon in a letter to Rochester (June 1, 1GS6), calls Nugent " a very troublesome, impertinent creature." t King, iii. 3. King, ii. 6, iii. 3. Clarendon in a letter to Ormond (Sept. 28, 16861, speaks highly of Nagle'a knowledge nnd ability, but in the Diary (Jan. 31, 1GSC-7) colls him " a covetous, ambitious juan." WILLIAM AKD MARY. 1Z/ in his opinion, the law, strictly construed, gave them, they could easily infer from a saying which, before he became a Judge, was often in his mouth. " I will drive," he used to say, " a coach and six through the Act of Settlement." He now car- ried his threat daily into execution. The cry of all Protestants was that it mattered not what evidence they produced before him ; that, when their titles were to be set aside, the rankest forgeries, the most infamous witnesses, were sure to have his countenance. To his court his countrymen came in multitudes with writs of ejectment and writs of trespass. In his court the government attacked at once the charters of all the cities and boroughs in Ireland ; and he easily found pretexts for pronounc- ing all those charters forfeited. The municipal corporations, about a hundred in number, had been instituted to be the strong- holds of the reformed religion and of the English interest, and had consequently been regarded by the Irish Roman Catholics with an aversion which cannot be thought unnatural or unrea- sonable. Had those bodies been remodelled in a judicious and impartial manner, the irregularity of the proceedings by which so desirable a result had been attained might have been par- doned. But it soon appeared that one exclusive system had been swept away only to make room for another. The boroughs were subjected to the absolute authority of the Crown. Towns in which almost every householder was an English Protestant were placed under the government of Irish Roman Catholics. Many of the new Aldermen had never even seen the places over whfch they were appointed to bear rule. At the same time the Sheriffs, to whom belonged the execution of writs and the nomination of juries, were selected in almost every instance from the caste which had till very recently been excluded from all public trust. It was affirmed that some of these important functionaries had been burned in the hand for theft. Others had been servants to Protestants ; and the Protestants added, with bitter scorn, that it was fortunate for the country when this was the case ; for that a menial who had cleaned the plate and rubbed down the horse of an English gentleman might pass for a civilised being, when compared with many of the native 128 HISTORY OF ENGLAN1J. aristocracy whoso lives had been spent in coshering or maraud- ing. To such Sheriffs no colonist, even if he had been so strangely fortunate as to obtain a judgment, dared to entrust an execution.* Thus the civil power had, in the space of a few months, been transferred from the Saxon to the Celtic population. The transfer of the military power had been not less complete. The army, which, under the command of Ormoud, had been the chief safeguard of the English ascendency, had ceased to exist. Whole regiments had been dissolved and reconstructed. Six thousand Protestant veterans, deprived of their bread, were brooding in retirement over their wrongs, or had crossed the sea and joined the standard of William. Their place was supplied by men who had long suffered oppression, and who, finding themselves suddenly transformed from slaves into mas- ters, were impatient to pay back, with accumulated usury, the heavy debt of injuries and insults. The new soldiers, it was said, never passed an Englishman without cursing him and call- ing him by some foul name. They were the terror of every Protestant innkeeper ; for, from the moment when they came under his roof, they ate and drank everything : they paid for nothing ; and by their rude swaggering they scared more re- spectable guests from his door.f Such was the state of Ireland when the Prince of Orange landed at Torbay. From that time every packet which arrived at Dublin brought tidings, such as* could not but increase the mutual fear and loathing of the hostile races. The* colonist, who, after long enjoying and abusing power, had now tasted for * King, ii. 5, 1, Hi. 3, 5 ; A Short View of the Methods made use of in Ireland for the Supervision and Destruction of the Protestant Religion and Interests, by a Clergyman lately escaped from thence, licensed October 17, 1689. t King, iii. 2. I cannot find that Charles Leslie, who was zealous on the other side, has, in his answer to King, contradicted any of these facts. Indeed Leslie gives up Tyrconnel's administration. " I desire to obviate one objection which I know will be made, as if I were about wholly to vindicate all that the Lord Tyr- connel and other of King James's ministers have done in Ireland, especially before this revolution began, and which most of anything brought it on. No ; I am far from it. I am sensible that their carriage in many particulars gave greater occasion to King James's enemies than all the other maladministrations which were charged upon his government." Leslie's Answer to King, ICSli. WILLIAM AND MARY. 129 a moment the bitterness of servitude, the native, who, having drunk to the dregs all the bitterness of servitude, had at length for a moment enjoyed and abused power, were alike sensible that a great crisis, a crisis like that of 1641, was at hand. The majority impatiently expected Phelim O'Neil to revive in Tyr- connel. The minority saw in William a second Oliver. On which side the first blow was struck was a question which Williamites and Jacobites afterwards debuted with much asperity. But no question could be more idle. History must do to both parties the justice which neither has ever done to the other, and must admit that both had fair pleas and cruel provocations. Both had been placed, by a fate for which neither was answerable, in such a situation that, human nature being what it is, they could not but regard each other with enmity. A king, who perhaps might have reconciled them, had, year after year, systematically employed his whole power for the purpose of inflaming their enmity to madness. It was now impossible to establish in Ireland a just and beneficent govern- ment, a government which should know no distinction of race or of sect, a government which, while strictly respecting the rights guaranteed by law to the new landowners, should allevi- ate by a judicious liberality, the misfortunes of the ancient gentry. The opportunity had passed away ; compromise had become impossible : the two infuriated castes were alike con- vinced that it was necessary to oppress or to be oppressed, and that there could be no safety but in victory, vengeance, and dominion. They agreed only in spurning out of the way every mediator who sought to reconcile them. During some weeks there were outrages, insults, evil reports, violent panics, the natural preludes of the terrible conflict which was at hand. A rumour spread over the whole island that, on the ninth of December, there would be a general massacre of the Englishry. Tyrconnel sent for the chief Protestants of Dublin to the Castle, and, with his usual energy of diction, invoked on himself all the vengeance of heaven, if the report was not a cursed, a blasted, a con founded lie. It was said that, in his rage at finding his oaths ineffectual, he pulled off his hat and wig, and VOL. III. 9 180 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. flung them into the fire.* But lying Dick Talbot was so well known that his imprecations and gesticulations only strengthened the apprehension which they were meant to allay. Ever since the recall of Clarendon there had been a large emigration of timid and quiet people from the Irish ports to England. That emigration now went on faster than ever. It was not easy to obtain a passage on board of a well built or commodious vessel. But many persons, made bold by excess of fear, and choosing rather to trust the winds and waves than the exasperated Irishry, ventured to encounter all the dangers of St. George's Channel and of the Welsh coast in open boats and in the depth of win- ter. The English who remained began, in almost every county, to draw close together. Every large country house became a fortress. Every visitor who arrived after nightfall was chal- lenged from a loophole or from a barricaded window ; and if he attempted to enter without passwords and explanations, a blun- derbuss was presented to him. On the dreaded night of the ninth of December, there was scarcely one Protestant mansion from the Giant's Causeway to Bantry Bay in which armed men were not watching and lights burning from the early sunset to the late sunrise.f A minute account of what passed in one district at this time has come down to us, and well illustrates the general state of the kingdom. The south-western part of Kerry is now well known as the most beautiful tract in the British isles. The mountains, the glens, the capes stretching far into the Atlantic, the crags on which the eagles build, the rivulets brawling down rocky passes, the lakes overhung by groves in which the wild deer find covert, attract every summer crowds of wanderers sated with the business and the pleasures of great cities. The beauties of that country are indeed too often hidden in the mist and rain which the west wind brings up from a boundless ocean. But, on the rare days when the sun shines out in all his glory, the * A True and Impartial Account of the most material Passages in Ireland since December 1C88, by a Gentleman who was an Eye-witness ; licensed July 2 1689. t A True and Impartial Account, 1CS9 ; Leslie's Answer to King, 1C92. WILLIAM AND MARY. landscape has a freshness and a warmth of colouring seldom found in our latitude. The myrtle loves the soil. The arbutus thrives better than even on the sunny shore of Calabria.* The turf is of livelier hue than elsewhere : the hills glow with a richer purple : the varnish of the holly and ivy is more glossy ; and berries of a brighter red peep through foliage of a brighter green. But during the greater part of the seventeenth century this paradise was as little known to the civilised world as Spitz- bergen or Greenland. If ever it was mentioned, it was mention- ed as a horrible desert, a chaos of bogs, thickets, and precipices, whore the she wolf still littered, and where some half naked sav- ages, who could not speak a word of English, made themselves burrows in the mud, and lived on roots and sour milk.f At length, in the year 1 670, the benevolent and enlightened Sir William Petty determined to form an English settlement in this wild district. He possessed a large domain there, which has descended to a posterity worthy of such an ancestor. On the improvement of that domain, he expended, it was said, not less than ten thousand pounds. The little town which he founded, named from the bay of Kenmare, stood at the head of that bay under a mountain ridge, on the summit of which travel- lers now stop to gaze upon the loveliest of the three lakes of Killarney. Scarcely any village, built by an enterprising band of New Englanders, far from the dwellings of their countrymen, in the midst of the hunting grounds cf the Red Indians, was * There have been in the neighbourhood of Killarney specimens of the arbutus thirty feet high and four feet and a half round. See the Philosophical Trans- actions, 227. 1 In a very full account of the British isles published at Nuremberg in 1600, Kerry is described as " an vielen Orten unwegfam und voller Walder und Ge- bi'trge." Wolves still infested Ireland. " Kein schadlich Thier ist da, ansser- halb Wolff und Filches." So late as the year 1710 money was levied on present- ments of the Grand Jury of Kerry for the destruction of wolves in that county. See Smith's Ancient and Modern State of the County of Kerry, 175*i. I do not know that I have ever met with a better book of the kind and of the size. In a poem published as late as 1719, and entitled Macdermot, or the Irish Fortune Hunter, in six cantos, wolfhuntinj and wolfspearinj; are represented as common sports in Munster. In William's reijrn Ireland was sometimes called by the ni'-kn-iuic of Wolfland. Thus in a poem on the battle of La Hogue, called Advice to a Painter, the terror of the Irish army is thus described : " A chilling damp And Wolflftnd howl runs thro' the ruing camp." 132 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. more completely out of the pale of civilization than Kenmare. Between Petty's settlement and the nearest English habitation the journey by land was of two days through a wild and danger- ous country. Yet the place prospered. Forty-two houses were erected. The population amounted to a hundred and eighty. The land round the town was well cultivated. The cattle were numer- ous. Two small barks were employed in fishing and trading along the coast. The supply of herrings, pilchards, mackerel, and salmon was plentiful, and would have been still more plentiful, had not the beach been, in the finest part of the year, covered by multitudes of seals, which preyed on the fish of the bay. Yet the seal was not an unwelcome visitor : his fur was valuable, and his oil supplied light through the long nights of winter. An attempt was made with great success to set up iron works. It was not yet the practice to employ coal for the purpose of smelting ; and the manufacturers of Kent and Sussex had much difficulty in pro- curing timber at a reasonable price. The neighbourhood of Ken- mare was then richly wooded ; and Petty found it a gainful speculation to send ore thither. The lovers of the picturesque still regret the woods of oak and arbutus which were cut down to feed his furnaces. Another scheme had occurred to his active and intelligent mind. Some of the neighbouring islands abound- ed with variegated marble, red and white, purple and green. Petty well knew*at what cost the ancient Romans had decorated their baths and temples with many coloured columns hewn from Laconian and African quarries ; and he seems to have indulged the hope that the rocks of his wild domain in Kerry might fur- nish embellishments to the mansions of Saint James's Square, and to the choir of Saint Paul's Cathedral.* From the first, the settlers had found that they must be pre- pared to exercise the right of selfdefence to an extent which would have been unnecessary and unjustifiable in a well govern- ed country. The law was altogether without force in the high- lands which lie on the south of the vale of Tralee. No officer of justice willingly ventured into those parts. One pursuivant who in 1680 attempted to execute a warrant there was murdered. * Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry. WILLIAM AND MART. 133 The people of Kenmare seem however to have been suffi- ciently secured by their union, their intelligence, and their spirit, till the close of the year 1688. Then at length the effects of the policy of Tyrcounel began to be felt even in that remote corner of Ireland. In the eyes of the peasantry of Munster the colonists were aliens and heretics. The buildings, the boats, the machines, the granaries, the dairies, the furnaces, were doubtless contemplated by the native race with that mingled envy and con- tempt with which the ignorant naturally regard the triumphs of knowledge. Nor is it at all improbable that the emigrants had been guilty of those faults from which civilized men who settle among an uncivilized people are rarely free. The power derived from superior intelligence had, we may easily believe, been sometimes displayed with insolence, and sometimes exerted with injustice. Now therefore, when the news spread from altar to altar and from cabin to cabin, that the strangers were to be driven out, and that their houses and lands were to be given as a booty to the children of the soil, a predatory war commenced. Plunderers thirty, forty, seventy in a troop, prowled round the town, some with firearms, some with pikes. The barns were robbed. The horses were stolen. In one foray a hundred and forty cattle were swept away and driven off through the ravines of Glengariff. In one night six dwellings were broke open and pillaged. At last the colonists, driven to extremity, resolved to die like men rather than be murdered in their beds. The house built by Petty for his agent was the largest in the place. It stood on a rocky peninsula round which the waves of the bay broke. Here the whole population assembled, seventy-five fighting men, with about a hundred women and children. They had among them sixty firelocks, and as many pikes and swords. Round the agent's house they threw up with great speed a wall of turf fourteen feet in height and twelve in thickness. The space enclosed was about half an acre. "Within this rampart all the arms, the ammunition, and the provisions of the settlement were collected, and several huts of thin plank were built. When these preparations were completed, the men of Kenmare began to make vigorous reprisals on their Irish neighbours, seized rob- 134 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. bers, recovered stolen property, and continued during some weeks to act in all things as an independent commonwealth. The gov- ernment was carried on by elective officers to whom every mem- ber of the society swore fidelity on the Holy Gospels.* While the people of the small town of Kenmare were thus bestirring themselves, similar preparations for defence were made by larger communities on a larger scale. Great numbers of gentlemen and yeomen quitted the open country, and repaired to those towns which had been founded and incorporated for the purpose of bridling the native population, and which, though recently placed under the government of Roman Catholic magis- trates, were still inhabited chiefly by Protestants. A consid- erable body of armed colonists mustered at Sligo, another at Charleville, a third at Mallow, a fourth still more formidable at Bandou.t But the principal strongholds of the Englishry during this evil time were Enniskillen and Londonderry. Enniskillen, though the capital of the county of Fermanagh, was then merely a village. It was built on an island surround- ed by the river which joins the two beautiful sheets of water known by the common name of Lough Erne. The stream and both the lakes were overhung on every side by natural forests. Enniskillen consisted of about eighty dwellings clustering round an ancient castle. The inhabitants were, with scarcely an ex- ception, Protestants, and boasted that their town had been true to the Protestant cause through the terrible rebellion which broke out in 1G41. Early in December they received from Dublin an intimation that two companies of Popish infantry were to be immediately quartered on them. The alarm of the little community was great, and the greater because it was known that a preaching friar had been exerting himself to inflame the Irish population of the neighbourhood against the heretics. A daring resolution was taken. Come what might, the troops should not be admitted. Yet the means of defence were slen- der. Not ten pounds of powder, not twenty firelocks fit for use, * Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Losses, sustained by the Protestants of Kilmare in Ireland, 1689 ; Smith's Ancient and Modern State of Kerry, 1756. t Ireland's Lamentation, licensed May 18, 1689. WILLIAM AND MART. 135 could be collected within the walls. Messengers were sent with pressing letters to summon the Protestant gentry of the vicinage to the rescue : and the summons was gallantly obeyed. In a few hours two hundred foot and a hundred and fifty horse had assembled. Tyrconnel's soldiers were already at hand'. They brought with them a considerable supply of arms to be distributed among the peasantry. The peasantry greeted the royal standard with delight, and accompanied the march in great numbers. The townsmen and their allies, instead of waiting to be attacked, came boldly forth to encounter the intruders. The officers of James had expected no resistance. They were confounded when they saw confronting them a column of foot, flanked by a large body of mounted gentlemen and yeomen. The crowd of camp followers ran away in terror. The soldiers made a retreat so precipitate that it might be called a flight, and scarcely halted till they were thirty miles off at Cavan.* The Protestants, elated by this easy victory, proceeded to make arrangements for the government and defence of Ennis- killen and of the surrounding country. Gustavus Hamilton, a gentleman who had served in the army, but who had recently been deprived of his commission by Tyrconnel, and had since been living on an estate in Fermanagh, was appointed Governor, and took up his residence iu the castle. Trusty men were enlisted and armed with great expedition. As there was a scarcity of swords and pikes, smiths were employed to make weapons by fastening scythes on poles. All the country houses round Lough Erne were turned into garrisons. No Papist was suffered to be at large in the town ; and the friar who was ac- cused of exerting his eloquence against the Englishrywas thrown into prison. f The other great fastness of Protestantism was a place of more importance. Eighty years before, during the troubles caused * A True Relation of the Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Andrew Hamil- ton, Rector of Kilskerrie, and one of the Prebends of the Diocese of Clogher, an Eye-witness thereof and Actor therein, licensed Jan. 15, 1689-90 ; A Further Im- parti'il Account of ths Actions of the Inniskilling men, by Captain William Mao Comiick, one of the first that took up Arms, 16E1. t Hamiltou's True Itelation , Mac Corinick's Further Impartial Account. 136 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. by the last struggle of the houses of O'Neil and O'Donnell against the authority of James the First, the ancient city of Derry had been surprised by one of the native chiefs : the in- habitants had been slaughtered, and the houses reduced to ashes. The insurgents were speedily put down and punished : the government resolved to restore the ruined town : the Lord Mayor, Aldermen, and Common Council of London were invited to assist in the work ; and King James the First made over to them in their corporate capacity the ground covered by the rains of the old Derry, and about six thousand acres in the neighbourhood.* This country, then uncultivated and uninhabited, is now enriched by industry, embellished by taste, and pleasing even to eyes accustomed to the well tilled fields and stately manor houses of England. A new city soon arose which, on account of its connection with the capital of the empire, was called London- derry. The buildings covered the summit and slope of a hill which overlooked the broad stream of the Foyle, then whitened by vast flocks of wild swans. f On the highest ground stood the Cathedral, a church which, though erected when the secret of Gothic architecture was lost, and though ill qualified to sustain a comparison with the awful temples of the middle ages, is not without grace and dignity. Near the Cathedral rose the Palace of the Bishop, whose see was one of the most valuable in Ireland. The city was in form nearly an ellipse ; and the principal streets formed a cross, the arms of which met in a square called the Diamond. The original houses have been either rebuilt or so much repaired that their ancient character can no longer be traced ; but many of them were standing within living memory. They were in general two stories in height; and some of them had stone staircases on the outside. The dwellings were encom- passed by a wall of which the whole circumference was little less than a mile. On the bastions were planted culverins and sakers presented by the wealthy guilds of London to the colony. On * Concise View of the Irish Society, 1822 ; Mr. Heath's interesting Account of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, Appendix 17. i The Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland, licensed July 17, 1689. WILLIAM AND MART. 137 some of these ancient guns, which have done memorable service to a great cause, the devices of the Fishmongers' Company, of the Vintners' Company, and of the Merchant Tailors' Company are still discernible.* The inhabitants were Protestants of Anglosaxon blood. They were indeed not all of one country or of one church : but Eng- lishmen and Scotchmen, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, seem to have generally lived together in friendship, a friendship which is sufficiently explained by their common antipathy to the Irish race and to the Popish religion. During the rebellion of 1641, Londonderry had resolutely held out against tire native chieftains, and had been repeatedly besieged in vaiu.f Since the Restora- tion the city had prospered. The Foyle, when the tide was high, brought up ships of large burden to the quay. The fisheries throve greatly. The nets, it was said, were sometimes so full that it was necessary to fling back multitudes of fish into the waves. The quantity of salmon caught annually was estimated at eleven hundred thousand pounds' weight, t The people of Londonderry shared in the alarm which, towards the close of the year 1688, was general among the Protestants settled in Ireland. It was known that the aboriginal peasantry of the neighbourhood were laying in pikes and knives. Priests had been haranguing in a style of which, it must be owned, the Puritan part of the Anglosaxon colony had little right to complain, about the slaughter of the Amalekites, and the judgments which Saul had brought on himself by sparing one of the proscribed race. Rumours from various quarters and anonymous letters in various hands agreed in naming the ninth of December as the day fixed for the extirpation of the stran- gers. While the minds of the citizens were agitated by these reports, news came that a regiment of twelve hundred Papists, commanded by a Papist, Alexander Macdonnell, Earl of Antrim, had received orders from the Lord Deputy to occupy London- * These things I observed or learned on the spot. + Tho best account that I have seen of what passed in Londonderry during the war which began in 1641 is in Dr. Reid's History of the Presbyterian Church in Ireland. t The Interest of England in the Preservation of Ireland ; 1689. 138 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. deny, and was already on the march from Coleraine. The consternation was extreme. Some were for closing the gates and resisting ; some for submitting ; some for temporising. The corporation had, like the other corporations of Ireland, been remodelled. The magistrates were men of low station and character. Among them was 'only one person of Anglosaxon extraction ; and he had turned Papist. In such rulers the ^habitants could place no confidence.* The Bishop, Ezekiel Hopkins, resolutely adhered to the political doctrines which he had preached during many years, and exhorted his flock to go patiently to the slaughter rather then incur the guilt of disobeying the Lord's Anointed. f Antrim was meanwhile drawing nearer and nearer. At length the citizens saw from the walls his troops arrayed on the opposite shore of the Foyle. There was then no bridge ; but there was a ferry which kept up a constant communication between the two banks of the river ; and by this ferry a detachment from Antrim's regiment crossed. The officers presented themselves at the gate, produced a warrant directed to the Mayor and Sheriffs, and demanded admittance and quarters for His Majesty's soldiers. Just at this moment thirteen young apprentices, most of whom appear, from their names, to have been of Scottish birth or descent, flew to the guard room, armed themselves, seized the keys of the city, rushed to the Ferry Gate, closed it in the face of the King's officers, and let down the portcullis. James Mori- son, a citizen more advanced in years, addressed the intruders * My authority for this unfavourable account of the corporation is an epic poem entitled the Londeriad. This extraordinary work must have been written very soon after the events to wliich.it relates ; for it is dedicated to Robert Roch- fort. Speaker of the House of Commons ; and Eochfort was Speaker from 1695 to 1009. The poet had no invention ; he had evidently a minute knowledge of the city which he celebrated ; and his doggerel is consequently not without historical value. He says : " For burgesses and freemen they had chose Broguemakers, butchers, raps, and such as those : In all the corporation not a man Of British parents, except Buchanan." fhis Buchanan is afterwards described " A knave all o'er : For he had learned to tell his beads before." t See a sermon preached by Mm at Dublin on Jan. 31, 1669. The text is "Submit yourselves to every ordinance of man for the Lord's sake." WILLIAM AND MART. 139 from the top of the wall and advised them to be gone. They stood in consultation before the gate till they heard him cry, " Bring a great gun this way " They then thought it time to get beyond the range of shot. They retreated, reembarked, and rejoined their comrades on the other side of the river. The flame had already spread. The whole city was up. The other gates were secured. Sentinels paced the ramparts everywhere. The magazines were opened. Muskets and gunpowder were dis- tributed. Messengers were sent, under cover of the following night, to the Protestant gentlemen of the neighbouring counties. The bishop expostulated in vain. It is indeed probable that the ve- hement and daring young Scotchmen who had taken the lead on this occasion had little respect for his office. One of them broke in on a discourse with which he interrupted the military prepara- tions by exclaiming, "A good sermon, my lord ; a very good sermon : but we have not time to hear it just now." * The Protestants of the neighbourhood promptly obeyed the summons of Londonderry. Within forty-eight hours, hundreds of horse and foot came by various roads to the city. Antrim, not thinking himself strong enough to risk an attack, or not dis- posed to take on himself the responsibility of commencing a civil war without further orders, retired with his troops to Coleraine. t &5??i It might have been expected that the resistance of Enniskil- len and Londonderry would have irritated Tyrconnel into tak- ing some desperate step. And in truth his savage and imperious temper was at first inflamed by the news almost to madness. But, after wreaking his rage, as usual, on his wig, he became somewhat calmer. Tidings of a very sobering nature had just reached him. The Prince of Orange was marching unopposed to London. Almost every county and every great town in England had declared for him. James, deserted by his ablest * 'Walker's Account of the Siege of Deny, 1689 ; Mackenzie's Narrative of the Siege of Londonderry, 108!) ; An Apology for the failures charged on the Rev- erend Mr. Walker's Account of the late Siege of Derry, icSO ; A Light to the Blind. This last work, a manuscript in the possession of Lord Fingal. is the work of a zealous Roman Catholic and a mortal enemy of England. Large ex- tracts from it are among the Mackintosh MSS. The date in the litlepage ia 1711. 140 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. captains and by his nearest relatives, had sent commissioners to treat with the invaders, and had issued writs convoking a Par- liament. While the result of the negotiations which were pending in England was uncertain, the Viceroy could not ven- ture to take a bloody revenge on the refractory Protestants of Ireland. He therefore thought it expedient to affect for a time a clemency and moderation which were by no means congenial to his disposition. The task of quieting the Englishry of Ulster was entrusted to William Stewart, Viscount Mountjoy. Mount- joy, a brave soldier, an accomplished scholar, a zealous Protes- tant, and yet a zealous Tory, was one of the very few members of the Established Church who still held office in Ireland. He was Master of the Ordnance in that kingdom, and was colonel of a regiment in which an uncommonly large proportion of the Englishry had been suffered to remain. At Dublin he was the centre of a small circle of learned and ingenious men who had, under his presidency, formed themselves into a Royal Society, the image, on a small scale, of the Royal Society of London. In Ulster, with which he was peculiarly connected^his name was held in high honour by the colonists.* He hastened with his regiment to Londonderry and was well received there. For it was known that though he was firmly attached to hered- itary monarchy he was not less firmly attached to the reformed religion. The citizens readily permitted him to leave within their walls a small garrison exclusively composed of Protestants, under the command of his lieutenant colonel, Robert Lundy, who took the title of Governor.f The news of Mountjoy's visit to Ulster was highly gratifying to the defenders of Enniskillen. Some gentlemen deputed by that town waited on him to request his good offices, but were disappointed by the reception which they found. " My advice to you is," he said, "to submit to the King's authority." " What, my Lord ? " said one of the deputies ; " Are we to sit still and let ourselves be butchered ? " " The King," said Mountjoy, * As to Mountjoy's character and position, see Clarendon's letters from Ire. land, particularly that to Lord Dartmouth of Feb. 8, and that to Evelyn of. ITeb. \4, 1685-6. " Bon officier, et homme d'esprit," says Avaux. t Walker's account ; Light to the Blind* WILLIAM AND MART. 141 protect you." "If all that we hear be true," said the deputy, " His Majesty will find it hard enough to protect him- self." The conference ended in this unsatisfactory manner. Enniskilleu still kept its attitude of defiance , and Mountjoy re- turned to Dublin.* By this time it had indeed become evident that James could not protect himself. It was known in Ireland that he had fled ; that he had been stopped ; that he had fled again ; that the Prince of Orange had arrived at Westminster in triumph, had taken on himself the administration of the realm, and had issued letters summoning a Convention. Those lords and gentlemen at whose request the Prince had assumed the government, had earnestly entreated him to take the state of Ireland into his immediate consideration ; and he had in reply assured them that he would do his best to maintain the Protestant religion and the English interest in that kingdom. His enemies afterwards accused him of utterly disregarding this promise ; nay, they alleged, that he purposely suffered Ireland to sink deeper and deeper in calamity. Halifax, they said, had, with cruel and perfidious ingenuity, devised this mode of placing the Convention under a species of duress ; and the trick had succeeded but too well. The vote which called William to the throne would not have passed so easily but for the extreme dangers which threatened the state ; and it was in consequence of his own dishonest inactivity that those dangers had become ex- treme.f As this accusation rests on no proof, those who repeat it are at least bound to show that some course clearly better than the course which William took was open to him ; and this they will find a difficult task. If indeed he could, within a few weeks after his arrival in London, have sent a great expedition to Ireland, that kingdom might perhaps, after a short struggle, or without a struggle, have submitted to his authority ; and a long series of crimes and calamities might have been averted. But the factious orators and pamphleteers, who, much at their * Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account. t Burnet, i. 807 ; and the notes by Swift and Dartmouth. Tutchin, In the Observator, repeats this idle calumny. K2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ease, reproached him for not sending such an expedition, have been perplexed if they had been required to find the men, the ships, and the funds. The English army had lately been arrayed against him : part of it was still ill disposed towards him ; and the whole was utterly disorganised. Of the army 'which he had brought from Holland not a regiment could be spared. He had found the treasury empty and the pay of the navy in arrear. He had no power to hypothecate any part of the public revenue. Those who lent him money lent it on no security but his bare word. It was only by the patriotic liberali- ty of the merchants of London that he was enabled to defray the ordinary charges of government till the meeting of the Con- vention. It is surely unjust to blame him for not instantly fitting out, in such circumstances, an armament sufficient to conquer a kingdom. Perceiving that, till the government of England was settled, it would not be in his power to interfere effectually by arms in the affairs of Ireland, he determined to try what effect negotia- tion would produce. Those who judged after the event pro- nounced that he had not, on this occasion, shown his usual sagacity. He ought, they said, to have known that it was absurd to expect submission from Tyrconnel. Such however was not at the time the opinion of men who had the best means of in- formation, and whose interest was a sufficient pledge for their sincerity. A great meeting of noblemen and gentlemen who had property in Ireland was held, during the interregnum, at the house of the Duke of Orinond in Saint James's Square. They advised tha Prince to try whether the Lord Deputy might not be induced to capitulate on honourable and advantageous terms,* In truth there is strong reason to believe that Tyrconnel really wavered. For, fierce as were his passions, they never made him forgetful of his interest ; and he might well doubt whether it were not for his interest, in declining years and health, to retire from business with full indemnity for all past offences, with high rank, and with an ample fortune, rather than to stake his life * The Orange Gazette, Jan. 10, 1G83. WILLIAM AND MART. 143 and property on the event of a war against the whole power of England. It is certain that he professed himself willing to yield. He opened a communication with the Prince of Orange, and affected to take counsel with Mountjoy, and witTi others who, though they had not thrown off their allegiance to James, were yet firmly attached to the Established Church and to the English connection. In one quarter, a quarter from which William was justified in expecting the most judicious counsel, there was a strong con- viction that the professions of Tyrconnel were sincere. No British statesman had then so high a reputation throughout Europe as Sir William Temple. His diplomatic skill had, twenty years before, arrested the progress of the French power. He had been a steady and an useful friend to the United Prov- inces and to the House of Nassau. He had long been on terms of friendly confidence with the Prince of Orange, and had nego- tiated that marriage to which England owed her recent deliver- ance. With the affairs of Ireland Temple was supposed to be peculiarly well acquainted. His family had considerable prop- erty there : he had himself resided there during several years : he had represented the county of Carlow in Parliament ; and a large part of his income was derived from a lucrative Irish office. There was no height of power, of rank, or of opulence to which he might not have risen, if he would have consented to quit his retreat, and to lend his assistance and the weight of his name to the new government. But power, rank and opulence had less attraction for his Epicurean temper than ease and security. He rejected the most tempting invitations, and continued to amuse himself with his books, his tulips, and his pineapples, in rural seclusion. With some hesitation, however, he consented to let his eldest son John enter into the service of William. Dur- ing the vacancy of the throne, John Temple was employed in business of high importance ; and on subjects connected with Ireland, hisopinion, which might reasonably be supposed to agree with his father's, had great weight. The young politician flat- tered himself that he had secured the services of an agent emi- nently qualified to bring the negotiation with Tyrcoimel to a prosperous issue. 144 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. This agent was one of a remarkable family which had sprung from a noble Scottish stock, but which had long been settled in Ireland, and which professed the Roman Catholic religion. In the gay crowd which thronged Whitehall, during those scan- dalous years of jubilee which immediately followed the Restora- tion, the Hamiltons were preeminently conspicuous. The long fair ringlets, the radiant bloom, and the languishing blue eyes of the lovely Elizabeth still charm us on the canvass of Lely. She had the glory of achieving no vulgar conquest. It was re- served for her voluptuous beauty and for her flippant wit to overcome the aversion which the cold hearted and scoffing Gram- mont felt for the indissoluble tie. One of her brothers, Anthony, became the chronicler of that brilliant and dissolute society of which he had been not the least brilliant nor the least dissolute member. He deserves the high praise of having, though not a Frenchman, written the book which is, of all books, the most exquisitely French, both in spirit and in manner. Another brother, named Richard, had, in foreign service, gained some military experience. His wit and politeness had distinguished him even in the splendid circle of Versailles. It was whispered that he had dared to lift his eyes to an exalted lady, the natural daughter of the Great King, the wife of a legitimate prince cf the House of Bourbon, and that she had not seemed to be dis- pleased by the attentions of her presumptuous admirer.* Richard had subsequently returned to his native country, had been appointed brigadier general in the Irish army, and had been sworn of the Irish Privy Council. When the Dutch inva sion was expected, he came across Saint George's Channel with the troops which Tyrconnel sent to reinforce the royal army. After the flight of James, those troops submitted to the Prince of Orange. Richard Hamilton not only made his own peace with what was now the ruling power, but declared himself con- fident that, if he were sent to Dublin, he could conduct the negotiation which had been opened there to a happy close. If he failed, he pledged his word to return to London in three weeks. His influence in Ireland was known to be great : his honour had * M^iuoirea de Madame de la Fayette. WILLIAM AND MART. 145 never been questioned ; and he was highly esteemed by John Temple. The young statesman declared that he would answer for his friend Richard as for himself. This guarantee was thought sufficient ; and Hamilton set out for Ireland, proclaim- ing everywhere that he should soon bring Tyrconnel to reason. The offers which he was authorised to make to the Roman Catholics and personally to the Lord Deputy were most liberal.* It is not impossible that Hamilton may have really meant to keep his promise. But when he arrived at Dublin he found that he had undertaken a task which he could not perform. The hesitation of Tyrconnel, whether genuine or feigned, was at an end. He had found that he had no longer a choice. He had with little difficulty stimulated the ignorant and susceptible Irish to fury. To calm them was beyond his skill. Rumours were abroad that the Viceroy was corresponding with the English ; and those rumours had set the nation on fire. The cry of the common people was that, if he dared to selLthem for wealth and honours, they would burn the Castle and him in it, and would put themselves under the protection of France, t It was necessary for him to protest, truly or falsely } that he had never harboured any thought of submission, and that he had pretend- ed to negotiate only for the purpose of gaining time. Yet, be- fore he openly declared against the English settlers, and against England herself, what must be a war to the death, he wished to rid himself of Mountjoy, who had hitherto been true to the cause of James, but who, it was well known, would never con- sent to be a party to the spoliation and oppression of the colo- nists. Hypocritical professions of friendship and of pacific in- tentions were not spared. It was a sacred duty, Tyrconnel said, to avert the calamities which seemed to be impending. King James himself, if he understood the whole case, would not wish his Irish friends to engage at that moment in an enterprise which must be fatal to them and useless to him. He would permit them, he would command them, to submit to necessity, and to reserve themselves for better times. If any man of weight, * Burnet, i. 808 ; Life of James, ii. 320 ; Commons' Journals, July 29, 1689. t Avaux to Lewis, "IL^. 1689. April 4 VOL. III. 10 146 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. any man loyal, able, and well informed, would repair to Saint Germains and explain the state of things, His Majesty would easily be convinced. Would Mountjoy undertake this most honourable and important mission ? Mounjoy hesitated, and suggested that some person more likely to be acceptable to the King should be the messenger. Tyrconnel swore, ranted, de- clared that, unless King James were well advised, Ireland would sink to the pit of hell, and insisted that Mountjoy should go as the representative of the loyal members of the Established Church, and should be accompanied by Chief Baron Rice, a Roman Catholic high in the royal favour. Mountjoy yielded. The two ambassadors departed together, but with very different commissions. Rice was charged to tell James that Mountjoy was a traitor at heart, and had been sent to France only that the Protestants of Ireland might be deprived of a favourite leader. The King was to be assured that he was impatiently expected in Ireland, and that, if he would show himself there with a French force, he might speedily retrieve his fallen fortunes.* The Chief Baron earned with him other instructions which were probably kept secret even from the Court of Saint Ger- mains. If James should be unwilling to put himself at the head of the native* population of Ireland, Rice was directed to request a private audience of Lewis, and to offer to make the island a province of France.f As soon as the two envoys had departed, Tyrconnel set him- self to prepare for the conflict which had become inevitable ; and he was strenuously assisted by the faithless Hamilton. The Irish nation was called to arms ; and the call was obeyed with strange promptitude arid enthusiasm. The flag on the Castle of Dublin' was embroidered with the words, " Now or never ! Now and for ever ! " Those words resounded through the whole island. $ Never in modern Europe has there been such a rising up of a whole people. The habits of the Celtic peasant were such * Clarke's Life of James, ii. 331 ; Mountjoy's Circular Letter, dated .Tan. 10, 168-9 ; King, iv. 8. In Light to the Blind, Tyreomiel's " wise dissimulation is commended. 1 .nvaux to Lewis, April 13-23, 1089. t Printed Letter from Dublin, Feb. 25, 1089 ; Mephibosheth and Ziba, 1689 WILLIAM AND MAKY. 147 that he made no sacrifice in quitting his potato ground for the camp. He loved excitement and adventure. He feared work far more than danger. His national and religious feelings had, during three years, been exasperated by the constant application of stimulants. At every fair and market he had heard that a good time was at hand, that the tyrants who spoke Saxon and lived in slated houses were about to be swept away, and that the land would again belong to its own children. By the peat fires of a hundred thousand cabins had nightly been sung rude ballads which predicted the deliverance of the oppressed race. The priests, most of whom belonged to those old families which the Act of Settlement had ruined, but which were still revered by the native population, had, from a thousand altars, charged every Catholic to show his zeal for the true Church by provid- ing weapons against the day when it might be necessary to try the chances of battle in her cause. The army, which, under Ormond, had consisted of only eight regiments, was now in- creased to forty -eight : and the ranks were soon full to over- flowing. It was impossible to find at short notice one tenth of the number of good officers which was required. Commissions were scattered profusely among idle cosherers who claimed to be descended from good Irish families. Yet even thus the sup- ply of captains and lieutenants fell short of the demand ; and many companies were commanded by cobblers, tailors, and foot- men.* The pay of the soldiers was very small. The private had no more than three pence a day. One half only of this pit- tance was ever given him in money ; and that half was often in arrear. But a far more seductive bait than his miserable stipend was the prospect of boundless license. If the govern- ment allowed him less than sufficed for his wants, it was not extreme to mark the means by which he supplied the de- * The connection of the priests with the old Irish families is mentioned in Petty's Political Anatomy of Ireland. See the short view by a Clergyman lately escaped. 1689 ; Ireland's Lamentation, by an English Protestant that lately narrowly escaped with life from thence, 1689 ; A True Account of the Siat" of Ireland, by a person who with Great Difficulty left Dublin, 1CS9 ; Kir.g, .i. 7. Avaux coiiliriud all that these writers say aUcut the Irish officers. 148 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ficiency. Though four fifths of the population of Ireland were Celtic and Roman Catholic, more than four fifths of the proper- ty of Ireland belonged to the Protestant Englishry. The gar- ners, the cellars, above all the flocks and herds of the minority, were abandoned to the majority. Whatever the regular troops spared was devoured by bands of marauders who overran almost every barony in the island. For. the arming was now universal. No man dared to present himself at mass without some weapon, a pike, a long knife called a skean, or, at the very least, a strong ashen stake, pointed and hardened in the fire. The very women were exhorted by their spiritual directors to carry skeans. Every smith, every carpenter, every cutler, was at constant work on guns and blades. It was scarcely possible to get a horse shod. If any Protestant artisan refused to assist in the manufacture of implements which were to be used against his nation and his religion, he was flung into prison. It seems probable that, at the end of February, at least a hundred thousand Irishmen were in arms. Near fifty thousand of them were soldiers. The rest were banditti, whose violence and licen- tiousness the Government affected to disapprove, but did not really exert itself to suppress. The Protestants not only were not protected, but were not suffered to protect themselves. It was determined that they should be left unarmed in the midst of an armed and hostile population. A day was fixed on which they were to bring all their swords and firelocks to the parish churches ; and it was notified that every Protestant house in which, after that day, a weapon should be found should be given up to be sacked by the soldiers. Bitter complaints were made that any knave might, by hiding a spearhead or an old gunbarrel in a corner of a mansion, bring utter ruin on tLe owner.* * At the French War Office is a report on the State of Ireland in February 1689. In that report it is said that the Irish who had enlisted as soldiers were f orty-flve thousand, and that the number would have been a hundred thousand, if all who volunteered had been admitted. See the Sad and Lamentable Condi- tion of the Protestants in Ireland, 1689 ; Hamilton's True Relation, 1690 ; The Stale of Papist and Protestant Properties in" the Kingdom of Ireland, 1689 ; A True Representation to tho King and People of England how Matters were car- ried on all along in Ireland, licensed Aug. 16, 1G89 , Letter from Dublin, 1689 WILLIAM AND MART. 149 Chief Justice Keating, himself a Protestant, and almost the only Protestant who still held a great place in Ireland, strug- gled courageously in the cause of justice and order against the united strength of the government and the populace. At the Wicklow assizes of that spring, he, from the seat of judgment, set forth with great strength of language the miserable state of the country, Whole counties, he said, were devastated by a rab- ble resembling the vultures and ravens which follow the march of an army. Most of these wretches were not soldiers. They acted under no authority known to the law. Yet it was, ho owned, but too evident that they were encouraged and screened by some who were in high command. How else could it be that a market overt for plunder should be held within a short distance of the capital ? The stories which travellers told of the savage Hottentots near the Cape of Good Hope were realised in Leinster. Nothing was more common than for an honest man to lie down rich in flocks and herds acquired by the in- dustry of a long" life, and to wake a beggar. It was however to small purpose that Keating attempted, in the midst of that fearful anarchy, to uphold the supremacy of the law. Priests and military chiefs appeared on the bench for the purpose of overawing the judge and countenancing the robbers. One ruffian escaped because no prosecutor dared to appear. An- other declared that he had armed himself in conformity to the orders of his spiritual guide, and to the example of many per- sons of higher station than himself, whom he saw at that mo- ment in court. Two only of the Merry Boys, as they were called, were convicted : the worst criminals escaped ; and the Chief Justice indignantly told the jurymen that the guilt of the public ruin lay at their door.* When such disorder prevailed in Wicklow, it is easy to im- aoine what must have been the state of districts more barbarous o and more remote from the seat of government. Keating ap- pears to have been the only magistrate who strenuously exerted Ireland's Lamentation, 1689 ; Compleat History of the Life and Military Actions of Richard, Earl of Tyrconnel, Generalissimo of all the Irish forces now iu arms. 16R9. * See the proceedings in the State Trials. 150 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. himself to put the law in force. Indeed Nugent, the Chief Justice of the highest criminal court of the realm, declared on the bench at Cork that, without violence and spoliation, the in- tentions of the government could not be carried into effect, and that robbery must at that con juncture be tolerated as a necessary evil.* The destruction of property which took place within a few weeks would be incredible, if it were not attested by witnesses unconnected with each other and attached to very different in- terests. There is a close, and sometimes almost a verbal, agree- ment between the descriptions given by Protestants, who, dur- ing that reign of terror, escaped, at the hazard of their lives, to England, and the descriptions given by the envoys, commissa- ries, and captains of Lewis. All agreed in declaring that it would take many years to repair the waste which had been wrought in a few weeks by the armed peasantry. f Some of the Saxon aristocracy had mansions richly furnished, and side- boards gorgeous with silver bowls and chargers. All this wealth disappeared. One house, in which there had been three thousand pounds' worth of plate, was left without a spoon. $ But the chief riches of Ireland consisted in cattle. Innumer- able flocks and herds covered that vast expanse of emerald meadow, saturated with the moisture of the Atlantic. More than one gentleman possessed twenty thousand sheep and four thousand oxen. The freebooters who now overspread the country belonged to a class which was accustomed to live on potatoes and sour whey, and which had always regarded meat as a luxury reserved for the rich. These men at first revelled in beef and mutton, as the savage invaders, who of old poured down from the forests of the north on Italy, revelled in Massic and Falernian wines. The Protestants described with contempt- uous disgust the strange gluttony of their newly liberated slaves. Carcasses, half raw and half burned to cinders, sometimes still * King, iii. 10. t Ten years, says the French Ambassador ; twenty years, says a Protestant fugitive. t Animadversions on the proposal for sending back the nobility and gentry of Ireland, 1689-09. WILLIAM AND MART. 151 bleeding, sometimes in a state of loathsome decay, were torn to pieces, and swallowed without salt, bread, or herbs. Those marauders who preferred boiled meat, being often in want of kettles, contrived to cook the steer in his own skin. An ab- surd tragi-comedy is still extant, which was acted in this and the following year at some low theatre for the amusement of the English populace. A crowd of half naked savages appeared on the stage, howling a Celtic song and dancing round an ox. They then proceeded to cut steaks out of the animal while still alive, and to fling the bleeding flesh on the coals. In truth the barbarity and filthiuess of the banquets of the Rapparees was such as the dramatists of Grub Street could scarcely car'- cature. When Lent began, the plunderers generally ceased to devour, but continued to destroy. A peasant would kill a cow merely in order to get a pair of brogues. Often a whole flock of sheep, often a herd of fifty or sixty kine, were slaughtered ; the beasts were flayed ; the fleeces and hides were carried away ; and the bodies were left to poison the air. The French ambassador reported ta his master that, in six weeks, fifty thousand horned cattle had been slain in this manner, and were rotting on the ground all over the country. The number of sheep that were butchered during the same time was popu- larly said to have been three or four hundred thousand.f * King, iii. 10 ; The Sad Estate and Condition of Ireland, as represented in a Letter from a worthy Person who was in Dublin ou Friday last, March 4, 1689 ; Short View by a Clergyman, 1C89 ; Lamentation of Ireland, 1689 ; Complcat History of the Life and Actions of Kichard, Earl of Tyreonnel, 1689 ; The Royal Voyage, acted in 1689 and 1690. This drama, which, I believe, was performed at Bartholomew Fair, is one of the most curious of a curious class of compositions, utterly destitute of literary merit, but valuable as showing what were then the most successful claptraps for an audience composed of the common people, ' The end of this play," says the author in his preface, " is chiefly to expose the perfidious, base, cowardly, and bloody nature of the Irish." The account which the fugitive Protestants give of the wanton destruction of cattle is confirmed by Avaux in a letter to Lewis, dated April 13-23, 1SS9. and by Desgrigny in a letter to Louvois, dated May 17-27, 1690. Most of the despatches written by Avaax during his mission to Ireland are contained in a volume of which a very few copies were printed some years ago at the English Foreign Office. Of many 1 have also copies made at the French Foreign Office. The letters of Desgrigny, \vlo was employed in the Commissariat, I found in the Library of the French "\Var Office. I cannot too strongly express my sense of the liberality and courtes/ with which the immense and admirably arranged storehouses of curious informa- tion at Paris were thrown open to me. 152 nisTORT or ENGLAND. Any estimate which can now be framed of the value of the property destroyed during this fearful conflict of races must necessarily be very inexact. Yfe are not however absolutely without materials for such an estimate. The Quakers were neither a very numerous nor a very opulent class. We can hardly suppose that they were more than a fiftieth part of the Protestant population of Ireland, or that they possessed more than a fiftieth part of the Protestant wealth of Ireland. They were undoubtedly better treated than any other Protestant sect. James had always been partial to them : they own that Tyrcon- nel did his best to protect them ; and they seem to have found favour even in the sight of the Ixapparees.* Yet the Quakers computed their pecuniary losses at a hundred thousand pounds.f In Leinster, Munster, and Connaught, it was utterly impos- sible for the English settlers, few as they were and dispersed, to offer any effectual resistance to this terrible outbreak of the aboriginal population. Charleville, Mallow, Sligo, fell into the hands of the natives. Bandonj where the Protestants had mus- tered in considerable force, was reduced by Lieutenant General Macarthy, an Irish officer who was descended from one of the most illustrious Celtic houses, and who had long served, under a feigned name, in the French army.J The people of Kenmare held out in their little fastness till they were attacked by three thousand regular soldiers, and till it was known that several pieces of ordnance were coming to batter down the turf wall which surrounded the agent's house. Then at length a capitu- lation was concluded. The colonists were suffered to embark in a small vessel scantily supplied with food and water. They had no experienced navigator on board : but after a voyage of a fortnight, during which they were crowded together like * " A remarkable thing never to be forgotten was that they that were in gov- ernment then" at the end of 1688 "seemed to favour us and endeavour to preserve Friends." History of the Rise and Progress of the People called Qua- kers in Ireland, by Wight and Rutty, Dublin, 1751. King indeed (iii. 17) re- proaches the Quakers as allies and tools of the Papists. t Wight and Rutty. $ Life of James, ii. 327. Orig. Mere. Macarthy and his feigned nam* ar repeatedly mentioned by Dangeau. \VILLIAM AXD MARY. 153 slaves iu a Guinea ship, and suffered the extremity of thirst and hunger, they reached Bristol in safety.* When such was tho fate of the towns, it was evident that the country seats which the Protestant landowners had recently fortified in the three southern provinces could no longer be defended. Many families submitted, delivered up their arms, and thought themselves happy in escaping with life. But many resolute and highspirit- ed gentlemen and yeomen were determined to perish rather than yield. They packed up such valuable property as could easily be carried away, burned whatever they could not remove, and, well armed and mounted, set out for those spots in Ulster which were the strongholds of their race and of their faith. The flow- er of the Protestant population of Munster and Connaught found shelter at Enniskillen. Whatever was bravest and most truehearted in Leinster took the road to Londonderry, f The spirit of Enniskillen and Londonderry rose higher and higher to meet the danger. At both places the tidings of what had been done by the Convention at Westminster were received with transports of joy. William and Mary were proclaimed at Enniskillen with unanimous enthusiasm, and with such pomp as the little town could furnish. J Lundy, who commanded at Lon- donderry, could not venture to oppose himself to the general sentiment of the citizens and of his own soldiers. He therefore gave in his adhesion to the new government, and signed a decla- ration by which he bound himself to stand by that government, on pain of being considered a coward and a traitor. A vessel from England soon brought a commission from William and Mary which confirmed him in his office. To reduce the Protestants of Ulster to submission before aid could arrive from England was now the chief object of Tyrcon- nel. A great force was ordered to move northward, under the * Exact Relation of the Persecutions, Robberies and Losses sustained by the Protestant* of Kilmare in Ireland, 1689. t A true Representation to the King and People of England how Matters were carried on all along in Ireland by the late King James, licensed Ang. 16. 1689 ; A true Account of the Present State of Ireland by a person that with Great Difficulty left Dublin, licensed June 8, 1689. J Hamilton's Accounts of the Inmskilling Men, 1689. j Walker's Account, 1689. 154 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. command of Richard Hamilton. This man had violated all the obligations which are held most sacred by gentlemen and soldiers, had broken faith with his most intimate friends, had forfeited his military parole, and was now not ashamed to take the field as a general against the government to which he was bound to render himself up as a prisoner. His march left on the face of the country traces which the most careless eye could not during many years fail to discern. His army was accom- panied by a rabble, such as Keating had well compared to the unclean birds of prey which swarm wherever the scent of car- rion is strong. The general professed himself anxious to save from ruin and outrage all Protestants who remained quietly at their homes ; and he most readily gave them protections under his hand. But these protections proved of no avail ; and he was forced to own that, whatever power he might be able to exercise over his soldiers, he could not keep order among ihe mob of camp followers. The country behind him was a wilder- ness ; and soon the country before him became equally desolate. For, at the fame of his approach, the colonists burned their furniture, pulled down their houses, and retreated northward. Some of them attempted to make a stand at Dromore, but were broken and scattered. Then the flight became wild and tumul- tuous. The fugitives broke down the bridges and burned the ferryboats. Whole towns, the seats of the Protestant popula- tion, were left in ruins without one inhabitant. The people of Omagh destroyed their own dwellings so utterly that no roof was left to shelter the enemy from the rain and wind. The people of Cavan migrated in one body to Enniskillen. The day was wet and stormy. The road was deep in mire. It was a piteous sight to see, mingled with the armed men, the women and children weeping, famished, and toiling through the mud up to their knees. All Lisburn fled to Antrim ; and, as the foes drew nearer, all Lisburn and Antrim together came pouring into Londonderry. Thirty thousand Protestants, of both sexes and of every age, were crowded behind the bulwarks of the City of Refuge. There, at length, on the verge of the ocean, hunted to the last asylum, and baited into a mood in which men "WILLIAM AND MART. 155 may be destroyed, but will not easily be subjugated, the imperial race turned desperately to bay.* Meanwhile Mount joy and Rico had arrived in France. Mountjoy was instantly put under arrest and thrown into the Bastile. James determined to comply with the invitation which Rice had brought, and applied to Lewis for the help of a French army. But Lewis, though he showed, as to all things which concerned the personal dignity and comfort of his royal guests, a delicacy even romantic, arid a liberality approaching to pro- fusion, was unwilling to send a large body of troops to Ireland. He saw that France would have to maintain a long war on the Continent against a formidable coalition : her expenditure must be immense ; and great as were her resources, he felt it to be important that nothing should be wasted. He doubtless regarded with sincere commiseration and good will the unfortunate exiles to whom he had given so princely a welcome. Yet neither commiseration nor good will could prevent him from speedily discovering that his brother of England was the dullest and most perverse of human beings. The folly of James, his inca- pacity to read the characters of men and the signs of the times, his obstinacy, always most offensively displayed when wisdom enjoined concession, his vacillation, always exhibited most pitiably in emergencies which required firmness, had made him an outcast from England and might, if his counsels were blindly followed, bring great calamities on France. As a legitimate sovereign expelled by rebels, as a confessor of the true faith persecuted by heretics, as a near kinsman of the house of Bour- bon, who had seated himself on the hearth of that House, he was entitled to hospitality, to tenderness, to respect. It was fit that he should have a stately palace and a spacious forest, that the household troops should salute him with the highest military honours, that he should have at his command all the hounds of the Grand Huntsman and all the hawks of the Grand Falconer. But, when a prince, who, at the head of a great fleet and army, * Mackenzie's Narrative ; Mac Cormick's Further Impartial Account ; Story's Impartial History of the Affairs of Ireland, 1091 ; Apology for the Protestant >f Ireland ; Letter from Dublin of Feb. 23, 1689 ; Avaux to Lewis, April 15-2o, 16SO. 156 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. bad Host an empire without striking a blow, undertook to furnish plans for naval and military expeditions ; when a prince, who had been undone by his profound ignorance of the temper, of his own countrymen, of his own soldiers, of his own domestics, of his own children, undertook to answer for the zeal and fidelity of the Irish people, whose tongue he could not speak, and on whose land he had never set his foot ; it was necessary to receive his suggestions with caution. Such were the sentiments of Lewis ; and in these sentiments he was confirmed by his Minis- ter of War Louvois, who, on private as well as on public grounds, was unwilling that James should be accompanied by a large military force. Louvois hated Lauzun. Lauzun was a favourite at Saint Germains. He wore the garter, a badge of honour which has very seldom been conferred on aliens who were not sovereign princes. It was believed indeed at the French Court that, in order to distinguish him from the other knights of the most illustrious of European orders, he had been decorated with that very George which Charles the First had, on the scaffold, put into the hands of Juxon.* Lauzun had been encouraged to hope that, if French forces were sent to Ireland, he should command them ; and this ambitious hope Louvois was bent on disappointing.f An army was therefore for the present refused : but every- thing else was granted. The Brest fleet was ordered to be in readiness to sail. Arms for ten thousand men and great quan- tities of ammunition were put on board. About four hundred captains, lieutenants, cadets, and gunners were selected for the important service of organising and disciplining the Irish levies. The chief command was held by a veteran warrior, the Count of Rosen. Under him were Maumont, who held the rank of lieutenant general, and a brigadier named Pusignan. Five hundred thousand crowns in gold, equivalent to about a hundred and twelve thousand pounds sterling, were sent to Brest.:}: For James's personal comforts provision was made with anxiety re- * Meinoires de Madame de la Fayette ; Madame de S6vignt to Madame de Grignan, February 28, 1689. t Burnet, ii. 17 ; Life of James II., ii. 320, 321, 322. t Maumont's Instructions. WILLIAM AND MART. . 157 sembling that of a tender mother equipping her son for a first campaign. The cabin furniture, the camp furniture, the tents, the bedding, the plate, were luxurious and superb. Nothing which could be agreeable or useful to the exile was too costly for the munificence, or too trifling for the attention, of his gracious and/ splendid host. On the fifteenth of February, James paid a farewell visit to Versailles. He was conducted round the buildings and plantations with every mark of respect and kindness. The fountains played in his honour. It was the season of the Carnival : and never had the vast palace and the sumptuous gardens presented a gayer aspect. In the evening the two kings, after a long and earnest conference in private, made their appearance before a splendid circle of lords and ladies. " I hope," said Lewis, in his noblest and most winning manner, " that we are about to part, never to meet again in this world. That is the best wish I can form for you. But, if any evil chance should force you to return, be assured that you Will find me to the last such as you have found me hitherto." On the seventeenth, Lewis paid in return a farewell visit to Saint Germains. At the moment of the parting embrace, he said, with his most amiable smile, " We have forgotten one thing, a cuirass for yourself. You shall have mine." The cuirass was brought, and suggested to the wits of the Court ingenious allu- sions to the Vulcanian panoply which Achilles lent to his feebler friend. James set out for Brest ; and his wife, overcome with sickness and sorrow, shut herself up with her child to weep and pray.* James was accompanied or speedily followed by several of his own subjects, among whom the most distinguished were his son Berwick, Cartwright Bishop of Chester, Powis, Dover, and Mel fort. Of all the retinue, none was so odious to the people of Great Britain as Melfort. He was an apostate : he was believed by many to be an insincere apostate ; and the insolent, arbitrary, and menacing language of his state papers disgusted even the Jacobites. He was therefore a favourite with his * Dangeau, Feb. 15-25, 17-2T, 1689 ; Madame de SevignS, Feb. 18-28, Feb. 20. . Mgrnoires de Madame de la Fayette, AUich 2, ' 158 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. master : for to James unpopularity, obstinacy, and implacability were the greatest recommendations that a minister could have. What Frenchman should attend the King of England in the character of ambassador had been the subject of grave deliberation at Versailles. Barillon could not be passed over without a marked slight. But his self-indulgent habits, his want of energy, and, above all, the credulity with which he had listened to the professions of Sunderland, had made an unfa- vourable impression on the mind of Lewis. What was to be done in Ireland was not work for a trifler or a dupe. The agent of France in that kingdom must be equal to much more than the ordinary functions of an envoy. It would be his right and his duty to offer advice touching every part of the political and military administration of the country in which he would represent the most powerful and the most beneficent of allies. Barillon was therefore suffered to retire into privacy. lie affected to bear his disgrace with composure. His political career, though it had brought great calamities both on the House of Stuart and on the House of Bourbon, had been by no means unprofitable to himself. He was old, he said : he was fat : he did not envy younger men the honour of living on po- tatoes and whiskey among the Ii ish bogs : he would try to console himself with partridges, with Champagne, and with the society of the wittiest men and prettiest women of Paris. It was rumoured, however, that he was tortured by painful emo- tions which he was studious to conceal : his health and spirits failed ; and he tried to find consolation in religious duties. Some people were much edified by the piety of the old volup- tuary : but others attributed his death, which took place not long after his retreat from public life, to shame and vexa- tion.* The Count of Avaux, whose sagacity had detected all the plans of William, and who had in vain recommended a policy which would .probably have frustrated them, was the man on * Memoirs of La Fare and Saint Simon ; Note of Renaurtot on English affairs, 1097, in the French Archives ; Madame de Se'vlgne', j^.^- March 11 21. 1689 ; Letter of Madame de Coulanges to M. de Coulanges, July 23, 1691. WILLIAM AND MARY. 159 whom the choice of Lewis fell. In abilities Avaux had no superior among the numerous able diplomatists whom his country then possessed. His demeanour was singularly pleas- ing, his person handsome, his temper bland. His manners and conversation were those of a gentleman who had been bred in. the most polite and magnificent of all Courts, who had repre- sented that Court both in Roman Catholic and in Protestant countries, and who had acquired in his wanderings the art of catching the tone of any society into which chance might throw him. He was eminently vigilant and adroit, fertile in resources, and skilful in discovering the weak parts of a character. His own character, however, was not without its weak parts. The consciousness that he was of plebeian origin was the torment of his life. He pined for nobility with a pining at once pitiable and ludicrous. Able, experienced, and accomplished as he was, he sometimes, under the influence of this mental disease, de- scended to the level of Moliere's Jourdain, and entertained malicious observers with scenes almost as laughable as that in which the honest draper was made a Mamamouchi.* It would have been well if this had been the worst. But it is not too much to say that of the difference between right and wrong Avaux had no more notion than a brute. One sentiment was to him in the place of religion and morality, a superstitious and intolerant devotion to the Crown which he served. This sentiment pervades all his despatches, and gives a colour to all his thoughts and words. Nothing that tended to promote the interest of the French monarchy seemed to him a crime. Indeed he appears to have taken it for granted that not only French- men, but all human beings, owed a natural allegiance to the House of Bourbon, and that whoever hesitated to sacrifice the happiness and freedom of his own native country to the glory of that House was a traitor. While he resided at the Hague, he always designated those Dutchmen who had sold themselves to France as the well intentioned party. In the letters which he wrote from Ireland, the same feeling appears still more * See Saint Simon's account of the trick by which Avaux tried to pass himself off at Stockholm as a Kuight of the Order of the Holy Ghost. 160 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. strongly. He would have been a more sagacious politician if he had sympathised more with those feelings of moral approba- tion and disapprobation which prevail among the vulgar. For his own indifference to all considerations of justice and mercy was such that, in his schemes, he made no allowance for the consciences and sensibilities of his neighbours. More than once he deliberately recommended wickedness so horrible that wicked men recoiled from it with indignation. But they could not succeed even in making their scruples intelligible to him. To every remonstrance he listened with a cynical sneer, wondering within himself whether those who lectured him were such fools as they professed to be, or were only shamming. Such was the man whom Lewis selected to be the companion and monitor of James. Avaux was charged to open, if possible, a communication with the malecontents in the English Parlia- ment : and he was authorised to expend, if necessary, a hundred thousand crowns among them. James arrived at Brest on the fifth of March, embarked there on board of a man of war called the Saint Michael, and sailed within forty-eight hours. He had ample time, however, before his departure, to exhibit some of the faults by which he had lost England and Scotland, and by which he was about to lose Ireland. Avaux wrote from the harbour of Brest that it would not be easy to conduct any important business in concert with the King of England. His Majesty could not keep any secret from anybody. The very foremast men of the Saint Michael had already heard him say things which ought to have been reserved for the ears of his confidential advisers.* The voyage was safely and quietly performed ; and, on the afternoon of the twelfth of March, James landed in the harbour of Kinsale. By the Roman Catholic population he was received with shouts of unfeigned transport. The few Protestants who remained in that part of the country joined in greeting him, and perhaps not insincerely. For, though an enemy of their religion, * This letter, written to Lewis from the harbour of Brest, is in the Archives of the French Foreign Oflice, but is wanting in the very rare volume printed in Downing Street. WILLIA3I AXD MART. 161 he was not an enemy of their nation ; and they might reasona- bly hope that the worst king would show somewhat more re- spect for law and property than had been shown by the Merry Boys and Rapparees. The Vicar of Kinsale was among those who went to pay their duty : he was presented by the Bishop of Chester, and was not ungraciously received.* James learned that his cause was prospering. In the three southern provinces of Ireland the Protestants were disarmed, and were so effectually bowed down by terror that he had nothing to apprehend from them. In the North there was some show of resistance : but Hamilton was marching against the malecontents ; and there was little doubt that they would easily be crushed. A day was spent at Kinsale in putting the arms and ammunition out of reach of danger. Horses sufficient to carry a few travellers were with some difficulty procured ; and, on the fourteenth of March, James proceeded to Cork.f We should greatly err if we imagined that the road by which he entered that city bore any resemblance to the stately approach which strikes the traveller of the nineteenth century with -ad- miration. At present Cork, though deformed by many misera- ble relics of a former age, holds no mean place among the ports f) the empire. The shipping is more than half what the ship- ping of London was at the time of the Revolution. The cus- toms exceed the whole revenue which the whole kingdom of Ireland, in the most peaceful and prosperous times, yielded to the Stuarts. The town is adorned by broad and well built streets, by fair gardens, by a Corinthian^ portico which would do honour to Palladio, and by a Gothic College worthy to stand in the High Street of Oxford. In 1689, the city extended over about one tenth part of the space which it now covers, and was intersected by muddy streams, which have long been concealed by arches and buildings. A desolate marsh, in which the sports- man who pursued the waterfowl sank deep in water and mire at every step, covered the area now occupied by stately buildings, * A full and true account of the Landing and Keception of the late King James at Kinsale, in a letter from Bristol, licensed April 4, 1689 ; Leslie's Answer to King; Ireland's Lamentation ; Avaux, March 13-23. t Avaux, March 13-23, 1689 ; Life of James, ii. 327, Orig. Mem. VOL. Ill 11 162 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the palaces of great commercial societies. There was only a single street in which two wheeled carriages could pass each other. From this street diverged to right and left alleys squalid and noisome beyond the belief of those who have formed their notions of misery from the most miserable parts of Saint Giles's and Whitechapel. One of these alleys, called, and, by com- parison, justly called, Broad Lane, is about ten feet wide. From such places, now seats of hunger and pestilence, abandoned to the most wretched of mankind, the citizens poured forth to welcome James. He was received with military honours by Macarthy, who held the chief command in Munster. It was impossible for the King to proceed immediately to Dublin ; for the southern counties had been so completely laid waste by the banditti whom the priests had called to arms that the means of locomotion were not easily to be procured. Horses had become rarities : in a large district there were only two carts ; and those Avaux pronounced good for nothing. Some days elapsed before the money which had been brought from France, though no very formidable mass, could be dragged over the few miles which separated Cork from Kinsale.* While the King and his Council were employed in trying to procure carriages and beasts, Tyrconnel arrived from Dublin. He held encouraging language. The opposition of Enniskillen he seems to have thought deserving of little consideration. Londonderry, he said, was the only important post held by the Protestants ; and even Londonderry would not, in his judgment, hold out many days. At length James was able to leave Cork for the capital. On the road, the shrewd and observant Avaux made many remarks. The first part of the journey was through wild highlands, where it was not strange that there should be few traces of art and industry. But, from Kilkenny to the gates of Dublin the path of the travellers lay over gently undulating ground, rich with natural verdure. That fertile district should have been covered with flocks and herds, orchards and cornfields : but it was an untilled and unpeopled desert. Even in the towns the artisans * Avaux, March 15-25, 1689. WILLIAM AND MART. 163 were very few. Manufactured articles were hardly to be found, and if found could be procured only at immense prices. The envoy at first attributed the desolation which he saw on every side to the tyranny of the English colonists. In a very short time he was forced to change his opinion.* James received on his progress numerous marks of the good- will of the peasantry ; but marks such as, to men bred in the courts of France and England, had an uncouth and ominous appearance. Though very few labourers were seen at work in. the fields, the road was lined by Rapparees armed with skeans, stakes, and half pikes, who crowded to look upon the deliverer of their race. The highway along which he travelled presented the aspect of a street in which a fair is held. Pipers came forth to play before him in a style which was not exactly that of the French opera ; and the villagers danced wildly to the music. Long frieze mantles, resembling those which Spenser had, a century before, described as meet beds for rebels and apt cloaks for thieves, were spread along the path which the caval- cade was to tread ; and garlands in which cabbage stalks sup- plied the place of laurels, were offered to the royal hand. The women insisted on kissing His Majesty ; but it should seem that they bore little resemblance to their posterity ; for this compli- ment was so distasteful to him that he ordered his retinue to keep them at a distance-! On the twenty-fourth of March he entered Dublin. That city was then, in extent and population, the second in the British isles. It contained between six and seven thousand houses, and probably above thirty thousand inhabitants. $ In wealth and beauty, however, Dublin was inferior to many Eng- lish towns. Of the graceful and stately public buildings which now adorn both sides of the Liffey scarcely one had been even projected. The College, a very different edifice from that which * Avaux, Ma "' h a "' 1C89. April 4, t A full and true Account of the Landing and Reception of the late King James ; Ireland's Lamentation ; Light to the Blind. t See the calculations of Petty, King, and Davenant. If the average number of inhabitants to a house waa the same in Dublin as in London, the population of Dublin would have been about thirty-four thousand. 164 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. now stands on the same site, lay quite out of the city.* The ground which is at present occupied by Leinster House and Charlemont House, by Sackville Street and Merrion Square, was open meadow. Most of the dwellings were built of timber, and have long given place to more substantial edifices. The Castle had in 1686 been almost uninhabitable. Clarendon had complained that he knew of no gentleman in Pall Mall who was not more conveniently and handsomely lodged than the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. No public ceremony could be performed in a becoming manner under the Viceregal roof. Nay, in spite of constant glazing and tiling, the rain perpetu. ally drenched the apartments. f Tyrconnel, since he became Lord Deputy, had erected a new building somewhat more com- modious. To this building the King was conducted in state through the southern part of the city. Every exertion had been made to give an air of festivity and splendour to the dis- trict which he was to traverse. The streets, which were gen- erally deep in mud, were strewn with gravel. Boughs and flowers were scattered over the path. Tapestry and arras hung from the windows of those who could afford to exhibit such finery. The poor supplied the place of rich stuffs with blankets and coverlids. In one place was stationed a troop of friars with a cross ; in another a company of forty girls dressed in white, and carrying nosegays. Pipers and harpers played " The King shall enjoy his own again." The Lord Deputy carried the sword of state before his master. The Judges, the Heralds, the Lord Mayor and Aldermen, appeared in all the pomp of office. Soldiers were drawn up on the right and left to keep the passages clear. A procession of twenty coaches belonging to public functionaries was mustered. Before the Castle gate, the King was met by the host under a canopy borne by four bishops of his church. At the sight he fell on his knees, and passed some time in devotion. He then rose and was conducted to the chapel of his palace, once, such are the vicissitudes of * John Dunton speaks of College Green near Dublin. T have seen letters of that age directed to the College, by Dublin. There are some interesting old maps ot Dublin in the British Museum. t Clarendon to Rochester, Feb. 8, 1685-6, April 20, Aug. 12, Nov. 30, 1686. "WILLIAM AND MART. 165 human things, the riding house of Henry Cromwell. A Te Deum was performed in honour of His Majesty's arrival. The next morning he held a Privy Council, discharged Chief Justice Keating from any further attendance at the Board, ordered Avaux and Bishop Cartwright to be sworn in, and issued a proclamation convoking a Parliament to meet at Dublin on the seventh of May.* When the news that James had arrived in Ireland reached London, the sorrow and alarm were general, and were mingled with serious discontent. The multitude, not making sufficient allowance for the difficulties by which William was encompass- ed on every side, loudly blamed his neglect. To all the invec- tives of the ignorant and malicious he opposed, as was his wont, nothing but immutable gravity and the silence of profound dis- dain. But few minds had received from nature a temper so firm as his ; and still fewer had undergone so long and so rigorous a discipline. The reproaches which had no power to shake his fortitude, tried from childhood upwards by both extremes of fortune, inflicted a deadly wound on a less resolute heart. While all the coffeehouses were unanimously resolving that a fleet and army ought to have been long before sent to Dublin, and wondering how so renowned a politician as His Majesty could have been duped by Hamilton an 1 Tyrconnel, a gentle- man went down to the Temple Stairs, called a boat, and desir- ed to be pulled to Greenwich. He took the cover of a letter from his pocket, scratched a few lines with a pencil, and laid the paper on the seat with some silver for his fare. As the boat passed under the dark central arch of London Bridge, he sprang into the water and disappeared. It was found that he had written these words : " My folly in undertaking what I could not execute hath done the King great prejudice which cannot be stopped No easier way for me than this May his undertaking prosper May he have a blessing." There was no signature : but the body was soon found, and proved to be that of John Temple. He was young and highly accomplished : he * Life of James II., ii. 330 ; Full and true Account of the Landing and Recep- tion, &c. ; Ireland's Lamentation. IG6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. was heir to an honourable name : he was united to an amiable woman : he was possessed of an ample fortune ; and he hud in prospect the greatest honours of the state. It does' not appear that the public had been at all aware to what an extent he was answerable for the policy which had brought so much obloquy on the government. The King, stern as he was, had far too great a heart to treat an error as a crime. He had just appoint- ed the unfortunate young man Secretary at War; and the com- mission was actually preparing. It is not improbable that the cold magnanimity of the master was the very thing which made the remorse of the servant insupportable.* But great as were the vexations which William had to undergo, those by which the temper of his father-in-law was at this time tried were greater still. No court in Europe was dis- tracted by more quarrels and intrigues than were to be found within the walls of Dublin Castle. The numerous petty cabals which sprang from the cupidity, the jealousy, and the malevo- lence of individuals scarcely deserve mention. But there was one cause of discord which has been too little noticed, and which is the key to much that has been thought mysterious in the history of those times. Between English Jacobitism and Irish Jacobitism there was nothing in common. The English Jacobite was animated by a strong enthusiasm for the family of Stuart ; and in his zeal for the interests of that family he too often forgot the interests of the state. Victory, peace, prosperity, seemed evils to the stanch nonjurer of our island, if they tended to make usur- pation popular and permanent. Defeat, bankruptcy, famine, invasion, were, in his view, public blessings, if they increased the chance of a restoration. He would rather have seen his country the last of the nations under James the Second or James the Third, than the mistress of the sea, the umpire between coi.- * Clarendon's Diary ; Reresby's Memoirs ; Luttrell's Diary. I have followed liuttrell's version of Temple's last words. It agrees in substance with Claren- don's, but lias more of the abruptness natural on such an occasion. If anything could make so tragical an event ridiculous, it would be the lamentation of the author of the Londeriad. " The wretched youth against his friend exclaims, Arid iu despair drowns himself in the Thames." "WILLIAM AND MART. 167 tending potentates, the seat of arts, the hive of industry, under a Prince of the House of Nassau or of Brunswick. The sentiments of the Irish Jacobite were very different, and, it must in candour be acknowledged, were of a nobler character. The fallen dynasty was nothing to him. He had not, like a Cheshire or Shropshire cavalier, been taught from his cradle to consider loyalty to that dynasty as the first duty of a Christian and a gentleman. All his family traditions, all the lessons taught him by his foster mother and by his priests, had been of a very different tendency. He had been brought up to regard the foreign sovereigns of his native land with the feeling with which the Jew regarded Caesar, with which the Scot regarded Edward the First, with which the Castilian regarded Joseph Bonaparte, with which the Pole regards the Autocrat of the Russias. It was the boast of tha highborn Milesian that, from the twelfth century to the seventeenth, every generation of his family had been in arms against the English crown. His remote ancestors had contended with Fitzstephen and De Burgh. His greatgrandfather had cloven down the soldiers of Elizabeth in the battle of the Blackwater. His grandfather had conspired with O'Donnel against James the First. His father had fought under Sir Phelim O'Neilagainst Charles the First. The confisca- tion of the family estate had been ratified by an Act of Charles the Second. No Puritan, who had been cited before the High Commission by Laud, who had charged by the side of Cromwell at Naseby, who had been prosecuted under the Conventicle Act, and who had been in hiding on account of the Rye House plot, bore less affection to the House of Stuart than the O'Haras and Macmahons, on whose support the fortunes of that House now seemed to depend. The fixed purpose of these men was to break the foreign yoke, to exterminate the Saxon colony, to sweep away the Protestant Church, and to restore the soil to its ancient proprie- tors. To obtain these ends they would without the smallest scruple hare risen up against James ; and to obtain these ends they rose up for him. The Irish Jacobites, therefore, were not at all desirous that he should agaiu reign at Whitehall : for 1G8 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. they were perfectly aware that a Sovereign of Ireland, who was also Sovereign of England, would not, and, even if he would, could not, long administer the government of the smaller and poorer kingdom in direct opposition to the feeling of the larger and richer. Their real wish was that the crowns might be completely separated, and that their island might, whether with James or without James they cared little, form a distinct state under the powerful protection of France. While one party in the Council at Dublin regarded James merely as a tool to be employed for achieving the deliverance of Ireland, another party regarded Ireland merely as a tool to be employed for effecting the restoration of James. To the English and Scotch lords and gentlemen who had accompanied him from Brest, the island in which they now sojourned was merely a stepping stone by which they were to reach Great Britain. They were still as much exiles as when they were at Saint Germains ; and indeed they thought Saint Germains a far more pleasant place of exile than Dublin Castle. They had no sympathy with the native population of the remote and half barbarous region to which a strange chance had led them. Nay, they wero bound by common extraction and by common language to that colony which it was the chief object of the native population to root out. They had indeed, like the great body of their countrymen, always regarded the aboriginal Irish with very unjust contempt, as inferior to other European nations, not only in acquired knowledge, but in natural intelligence and courage, as born Gibeonites who had been liberally treated in being permitted to hew wood and to draw water for a wiser and mightier people. These Politicians also thought, and here they were undoubtedly in the right, that, if their master's object was to recover the throne of England, it would be mad- ness in him to give himself up to the guidance of the O's and the Macs who regarded England with mortal enmity. A law declaring the crown of Ireland independent, a law transferring mitres, glebes, and tithes from the Protestant to the Roman Catholic Church, a law transferring ten millions of acres from Saxons to Celts, would doubtless be loudly applauded in Clare WILLIAM AND MARY. 169 and Tipperary. But what would be the effect of such laws at Westminster ? What at Oxford ? It would be poor policy to alienate such men as Clarendon and Beaufort, Ken and Sher- lock, in order to obtain the applause of the Rapparees of the Bog of i Allen.* Thus the English and Irish factions in the Council at Dub- lin were engaged in a dispute which admitted of no compromise. Avaux meanwhile looked on that dispute from a point of view entirely his own. His object was neither the emancipation cf Ireland nor the restoration of James, but the greatness of the French monarchy. In what way that object might be best attained was a very complicated problem. Undoubtedly a French statesman could not but wish for a counterrevolution in England. The effect of such a counterrevolution would be that the power which was the most formidable enemy of France would become her firmest ally, that William would sink into insignificance, and that the European coalition of which he was the chief would be dissolved. But what chance was there of such a counterrevolution ? The English exiles indeed, after the fashion of exiles, confidently anticipated a speedy return to their country. James himself loudly boasted that his subjects on the other side of the water, though they had been misled for a moment by the specious names of reli- gion, liberty, and property, were warmly attached to him, and would rally round him as soon as he appeared among them. But the wary envoy tried in vain to discover any foundation for these hopes. He could not find that they were warranted by any intelligence which had arrived from any part of Great Britain ; and he was inclined to consider them as the mere daydreams of a feeble mind. He thought it unlikely that the usurper, whose ability and resolution he bad, during an unin- termitted conflict of ten years, learned to appreciate, would easily part with the great prize which had been won by such strenuous exertions and profound combinations. It was there- * Much lighv Is thrown on the dispute between the English and Irish parties in James's council, by a remarkable letter of Bishop Ma'oney to Bishop Tyrrel, which will he found in the Appendix to King's State of the Protestants. 170 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. fore necessary to consider what arrangements would be most beneficial to France, on the supposition that it proved impossible to dislodge William from England. And it was evident that, if William could not be dislodged from England, the arrangement most beneficial to France would be that which had been qontem- plated eighteen months before when James had no prospect of a male heir. Ireland must be severed from the English crown, purged of the English colonists, reunited to the Church of Rome, placed under the protection of the House of Bourbon, and made, in everything but name, a French province. In war, her resources would be absolutely at the command of her Lord Paramount. She would furnish his army with recruits. She would furnish his navy with fine harbours commanding all the great-western outlets of the English trade. The strong national and religious antipathy with which her aboriginal population, regarded the inhabitants of the neighbouring island would be a sufficient guarantee for their fidelity to that government which could alone protect her against the Saxon. On the whole, therefore, it appeared to Avaux that, of the two parties into which the Council at Dublin was divided, the Irish party was that which it was at present for the interest of France to support. He accordingly connected himself closely with the chiefs of that party, obtained from them the fullest avowals of all that they designed, and was soon able to report to his government that neither the gentry nor the common people were at all unwilling to become French.* The views of Louvois, incomparably the greatest statesman that France had produced since Richelieu, seem to have entirely agreed with those of Avaux. The best thing, Louvois wrote, that King James could do would be to forget that he had reigned in Great Britain, and to think only of putting Ireland into a good condition, and of establishing himself firmly there. Whether this were the true interest of the House of Stuart may be * Avaux, ^"^ 25 ' 1689, April 13-23. But it is less from any single letter, than from the whole tendency and spirit of the correspondence of Avaux, that i have formed vny uotioa of his objects. WILLIAM AND MARY 171 doubted. But it was undoubtedly the true interest of the House of Bourbon.* About the Scotch and English exiles, ard especially about Melfort, Avaux constantly expressed himself with an asperity hardly to have been expected from a man of so much sense and so much knowledge of the world. Melfo"rt was in a singularly unfortunate position. He was a renegade : he was a mortal enemy of the liberties of his country : he was of a bad and tyrannical nature ; and yet he was, in some sense, a patriot. The consequence was that lie was more universally detested than any man of his time. For, while his apostasy and his arbitrary maxims of government made him the abhorrence of England and Scotland, his anxiety for the dignity and integrity of the empire made him the abhorrence of the Irish and of the French. The first question to be decided was whether James should remain at Dublin, or should put himself at the head of his army in Ulster. On this question the Irish and British factions joined battle. Reasons of no great weight were adduced on both sides ; for neither party ventured to speak out. The point really in issue was whether the King should be in Irish or in British hands. If he remained at Dublin, it would be scarcely possible for him to withhold his assent from any bill presented to him by the Parliament which he had summoned to meet there. He would be forced to plunder, perhaps to attaint, innocent Protest- ant gentlemen and clergymen by hundreds ; and he would thus do irreparable mischief to his cause on the other side of Saint George's Channel. If he repaired to Ulster, he would be with- in a few hours' sail of Great Britain. As soon as Londonderry had fallen, and it was universally supposed that the fall of Londonderry could not be long delayed, he might cross the sea with part of his forces, and land in Scotland, where his friends were supposed to be numerous. When he was once on British ground, and in the midst of British adherents, it would no longer * " II faut done, oubliant qu'il a este Roy d'Angleterre et d'Eseosse, Tie pen- ser qti'ace qui peut bonifler 1'Irlande, et luy faciliter les moyens d'y subsister." Louvois to Avaux, June 3-13, 1689. 172 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. be in the power of the Irish to extort his consent to their schemes of spoliation and revenge. The discussions in the Council were long and warm. Tyr- conuel, who had just been created a Duke, advised his master to stay at Dublin. Melfort exhorted His Majesty to set out for Ulster. Avaux exerted all his influence in support of Tyrconnel j but James, whose personal inclinations were naturally on the British side of the question, determined to follow the advice of Melfort.* Avaux was deeply mortified. In his official letters he expressed with great acrimony his contempt for tha King's character and understanding. On Tyrconnel, who had said that he despaired of the fortunes of James, and that the real question was between the King of France and the Prince of Orange, the ambassador pronounced what was meant to be a warm eulogy, but may perhaps be more properly called an invective. " If he were a born Frenchman, he could not be more zealous for the interests of France." f The conduct of Melfort, on the other hand, was the subject of an invective which much resembles eulogy : " He is neither a good Irishman nor a good French- man. All his affections are set on his own country." | Since the King was determined to go northward, Avaux did not choose to be left behind. The royal party set out, leaving Tyrconnel in charge at Dublin, and arrived at Charlemont on the thirteenth of April. The journey was a strange one. The country all along the road had been completely deserted by the industrious population, and laid waste by bands of robbers. " This," said one of the French officers, "is like travelling through the deserts of Arabia." Whatever effects the colo- nists had been able to remove were at Londonderry or Enniskil- len. The rest had been stolen or destroyed. Avaux informed his Court that he had not been able to get one truss of hay for his horses without sending five or six miles. No labourer dared bring anything for sale lest some marauder should lay hands on it by the way. The ambassador was put one night into a rnis- * See the despatches written by Avaux during April 1689 ; Light to the Blind, t Avaux, April 6-16, 1689. } Avaux, May 8-18, 1689. Pusignau to Avaux, ^J 11 ^ 1 ' 1689. April *l, WILLIAM AND MARY. 173 erable taproom full of soldiers smoking, another night into a dis* mantled house without windows or shutters to keep out the rain. At Charlemont, a bag of oatmeal was, with great difficulty, and as a matter of favour, procured for the French legation. There was no wheaten bread except at the table of the King, who had brought a little flour from Dublin, and to whom Avaux had lent a servant who knew how to bake. Those who were honoured with an invitation to the royal table had their bread and wine measured out to them. Everybody else, however high in rank, ate horsecorn, and drank water or detestable beer, made with oats instead of barley, and flavoured with some nameless herb as a substitute for hops.* Yet report said that the country between Charlemont and Strabane was even more desolate than the coun- try between Dublin and Charlemont. It was impossible to carry a large stock of provisions. The roads were so bad, and the horses so weak, that the baggage waggons had all been left far behind. The chief officers of the army were consequently in want of necessaries ; and the ill humour which was the natural effect of *. I ought to say that on this occasion King is unjust to James. 214 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. not refrain from adding that, if Rosen had been an Englishman, he would have been hanged. Avaux was utterly unable to understand this effeminate sensibility. In his opinion, nothing had been done that was at all reprehensible ; and he had some difficulty in commanding himself when he heard the King and the secretary blame, in strong language, an act of wholesome severity.* Jn truth the French ambassador and the French general were well paired. There was a great difference, doubt- less, in appearance and manner, between the handsome, graceful, and refined politician, whose dexterity and suavity had been renowned at the most polite courts of Europe, and the military adventurer, whose look and voice reminded all who came near him that he had been born in a half savage country, that he had risen from the ranks, and that he had once been sentenced to death for marauding. But the heart of the diplomatist was really even more callous than that of the soldier. Rosen was recalled to Dublin ; and Richard Hamilton was again left in the chief command. He tried gentler means than those which had brought so much reproach on his predecessor. Ko trick, no lie, which was thought likely to discourage the starving garrison was spared. One day a great shout was raised by the whole Irish camp. The defenders of Londonderry were soon informed that the army of James was rejoicing on account of the fall of Enniskillen. They were told that they had now no chance of being relieved, and were exhorted to save their lives by capitulating. They consented to negotiate. But what they asked was, that they should be permitted to depart armed and in mili- tary array, by land or by water at their choice. They demand- ed hostages for the exact fulfilment of these conditions, and insisted that the hostages should be sent on board of the fleet which lay in Lough Foyle. Such terms Hamilton durst not grant: the Governors would abate nothing: the treaty was broken off; and the conflict recommenced.! By this time July was far advanced ; and the state of the * Leslie's Answer to King ; Avaux, July 5-15, 1689. " Je trouvay 1'expresslon bien forte : niais je ne voulois rien r^pondre, car le Roy s'estoit desja fort emportA" t Mackenzie. WILLIAM AND MARY. 215 city was, hour by hour, becoming more frightful. The number of the inhabitants had been thinned more by famine and disease than by the fire of the enemy. Ytt that fire was sharper and more constant than ever. One of the gates was beaten in : one of the bastions was laid in ruins ; but the breaches made by day were repaired by night with indefatigable activity. Every attack was still repelled. But the fighting men of the garrison were so much exhausted that they could scarcely keep their legs. Several of them, in the act of striking at the enemy, fell down from mere weakness. A very small quantity of grain remained, and was doled out by mouthfuls. The stock ot salted hides was considerable, and by gnawing them the garrison appeased the rage of hunger. Dogs, fattened on the blood of the slain who lay uuburied round the town, were luxuries which few could afford to purchase. The price of a whelp's paw was five shillings and sixpence. Nine horses were still alive, and but barely alive. They were so lean that little meat was likely to be found upon them. It was, however, determined to slaugh ter them for food. The peopled perished so fast, that it was impossible for the survivors to perform the rites of sepulture. There was scarcely a cellar in which some corpse was not decay- ing. Such was the extremity of distress that the rats who came to feast in those hideous dens were eagerly hunted and greedily devoured. A small fish, caught in the river, was not to be pur- chased with money. The only price for which such a treasure could be obtained was some handfuls of oatmeal. Leprosies, such as strange and unwholesome diet engenders, made existence a constant torment. The whole city was poisoned by the stench exhaled from the bodies ot the dead and of the half dead. That there should be fits of discontent and insubordination among men enduring such misery was inevitable. At one moment it was suspected that Walker had laid up somewhere a secret store of food, and was revelling in private, while he exhorted others to suffer resolutely for the good cause. His house was strictly examined : his innocence was fully proved : he regained his popularity ; and the garrison, with death in near prospect, thron-jod to ths cathedral to hear him preach, drank in his earn- 216 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. est eloquence with delight, and went forth from the house of God with haggard faces and tottering steps, but with spirit still unsubdued. There were, indeed, some secret plottiugs. A very few obscure traitors opened communications with the enemy. But it was necessary that all such dealings should be carefully concealed. None dared to utter publicly any words save words of defiance and stubborn resolution. Even in that extremity the general cry was, " No surrender." And there were not wanting voices which, in low tones, added, " First the horses and hides ; and then the prisoners ; and then each other." It was after- wards related, half in jest, yet not without a horrible mixture of earnest, that a corpulent citizen, whose bulk presented a strange contrast to the skeletons which surrounded' him, thought it expedient to conceal himself from the numerous eyes which followed him with cannibal looks whenever he appeared in the streets.* It was no slight aggravation of the sufferings of the garrison that all this time the English ships were seen far off in Lough Foyle. Communication between the fleet and the city was almost impossible. One diver who had attempted to pass the boom was drowned. Another was hanged. The language of signals was hardly intelligible. Ou the thirteenth of July, how- ever, a piece of paper sewed up in a cloth button came to Walker's hands. It was a letter from Kirke, and contained assurances of speedy relief. But more than a fortnight of intense misery had since elapsed ; and the hearts of the most sanguine were sick with deferred hope. By no art could the "provisions which were left be made to hold out two days more.f Just at this time Kirke received from England a despatch, which contained positive orders that Londonderry should be re- lieved. He accordingly determined to make an attempt which, * "Walker's Account. " The fat man in Londonderry " became a proverbial expression for a person whose prosperity excited the enry and cupidity of his less fortunate neighbours. t This, according to Narcissus Luttrtll. was the report made by Captain Withers, afterwards a highly distinguished officer, on whom Pope wrote an epitaph. WILLIAM AND MART. 217 as far as appears, he might have made, with at least an equally fair prospect of success six weeks earlier.* Among the merchant ships which had come to Lough Foyle under his convoy was one called the Mountjoy. The master, Micaiah Browning, a native of Londonderry, had brought from England a large cargo of provisions. He had, it is said, repeat- edly remonstrated against the inaction of the armament. He now eagerly volunteered to take the first risk of succouring his fellow citizens ; and his offer was accepted. Andrew Douglas, master of the Phoenix, who had on ..hoard a great quantity of meal from Scotland, was willing to share the danger and the honour. The two merchantmen were to be escorted by the Dartmouth, a frigate of thirty-six guns, commanded by Captain John Leake, afterwards an admiral of great fame. It was the twenty-eighth of July. The sun had just set : the evening sermon in the cathedral was over : and the heart- broken congregation had separated; when the sentinels on the tower saw the sails of three vessels coming up the Foyle. Soon there was a stir in the Irish camp. The besiegers were on the alert for miles along both shores. The ships were in extreme peril : for the river was low ; and the only navigable channel ran very near to the left bank, where the head quarters of the enemy had been fixed, and where the batteries were most numer- ous. Leake performed his duty with a skill and spirit worthy of his noble profession, exposed his frigate to cover the mer- chantmen, and used his guns with great effect. At length the little squadron came to the place of peril. Then the Mouutjoy took the. lead, and went right at the boom. The huge barricade cracked and gave way : but the shock was such that the Mount- joy rebounded, and stuck in the mud. A yell of triumph rose from the banks : the Irish rushed to their boats, and were pre- * The despatch, which positively commanded Kirke to attack the boom, was signed by Schomberg, who had already been appointed commander in chief of all the English forces in Ireland. A copy of it is among the Nairne MSS. in the Bodleian Library. Wodrow, on no better authority than the gossip of a country parish in Dumbartonshire, attributes the relief of Londonderry to the exhorta- tions of a heroic Scotch preacher named Gordon. lam inclined to think that Kirke was more likely to be influenced bv a peremptory order from Schombcrg, than by the united eloquence of a whole syiiocUof presbyterian divines. 218 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. paring to board : but the Dartmouth poured on them a well di- rected broadside which threw them into disorder. Just then the Phoenix dashed at the breach which the Mountjoy had made and was in a moment within the fence. Meantime the tide was rising fast. The Mouutjoy began to move, and soon passed safe through the broken stakes and floating spars. But her brave master was no more. A shot from one of the batteries had struck him; and he died by the most enviable of all deaths, in sight of the city which was his birthplace, which was his home, and which had just been saved by his courage and selfdevotion from the most frightful form of destruction. The night had closed in before the conflict at the boom began : but the flash of the guns was seen, and the noise heard, by the lean and ghastly mul- titude which covered the walls of the city. When the Mount- joy grounded, and when the shout of triumph rose from the Irish on both sides of the river, the hearts of the besieged died with- in them. One who endured the unutterable anguish of that moment has told us that they looked fearfully livid in each other's eyes. Even after the barricade had been passed, there was a terrible half hour of suspense. It was ten o'clock before the ships arrived at the quay. The whole population was there to welcome them. A-screen made of casks filled with earth was hastily thrown up to protect the landing place from the bat- teries on the other side of the river ; and then the work of un- loading began. First were rolled on shore barrels containing six thousand bushels of meal. Then came great cheeses, casks of beef, flitches of bacon, kegs of butter, sacks of pease and bis- cuit, ankers of brandy. Not many hours before, half a pound of tallow and three quarters of a pound of salted hide had been weighed out with niggardly care to every fighting man. The ration which each now received was three pounds of flour, two pounds of beef, and a pint of pease. It is easy to imagine with what tears grace was said over the suppers of that evening. There was little sleep on either side of the wall. The bonfires shone bright along the whole circuit of the ramparts. The Irish guns continued to roar all night ; and all night the bells of the rescued city made answer to the Irish guns with a peal of joy- 'WILLIAM AND MART. 219 ous defiance. Through the three following days the batteries of the enemy continued to play. But, on the third night, flames were seen arising from the camp ; and, when the first of August dawned, a line of smoking ruins marked the site lately occupied by the huts of the besiegers ; and the citizens saw far off the long column of pikes and standards retreating up the left bank of the Foyle towards Strabane.* So ended this great siege, the most memorable in the annals of the British isles. It had lasted a hundred and five days. The garrison had been reduced from about seven thousand effective men to about three thousand. The loss of the be- siegers cannot be precisely ascertained. Walker estimated it at eight thousand men. It is certain from the despatches of Avaux that the regiments which returned from the blockade had been so much thinned that many of them were not more than two hundred strong. Of thirty -six French gunners who had superin- tended the cannonading, thirty-one had been killed or disabled. t The means both of attack and of defence had undoubtedly been such as would have moved the great warriors of the Continent to laughter ; and this is the very circumstance which gives so peculiar an interest to the history of the contest. It was a contest, not between engineers> but between nations ; and the victory remained with the nation which, though inferior in num- ber, was superior in civilisation, in capacity for self government, and in stubbornness of resolution. $ As soon as it was known that the Irish army had retired, a deputation from the city hastened to Lough Foyle, and invited Kirke to take the command. He came accompanied by a long * Walker; Mackenzie; Histoire de la Revolution d'Irlande, Amsterdam, 1691 ; London Gazette Aug. 5, 12, 1GS9 ; Letter of Buchaii nnioug the Nainie MSS. ; Life of Sir John Leake ; The Londeriad ; Observations on Air. Walker's Account of the Siege of Londonderry, licensed Oct. 4, 1689. t Avaux to Seignelay, July 18-28 ; to Lewis, Aug. 9-19. J " You will see here, as you have all along, that the tradesmen of London- deny had more skill in their defence than the great officers of the Irish Army In their attacks." Light to the Blind- The author of this work is furious against the Irish gunners. The boom, he thinks, would never have been broken if they had -.lone their duty. Were they drunk ? Were they traitors ? He does not de- ter mine the point. " Lord," he exclaim?, " who seest the hearts of people, we leave the judgment of this affair to thy mercy, In the interim those gunners lost Ireland." 220 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. train of officers, and was received in state by the two Governors, who delivered up to him the authority which, under the pressure of necessity, they had assumed. He remained only a few days ; but he had time to show enough of the incurable vices of his character to disgust a population distinguished by austere morals and ardent public spirit. There was, however, no outbreak. The city was in the highest good humour. Such quantities of provisions had been landed from the fleet that there was in every house a plenty never before known. A few days earlier a man hud been glad to obtain for twenty pence a mouthful of carrion scraped from the bones of a starved horse. A pound of good beef was now sold for three halfpence. Meanwhile all hands were busied in removing corpses which had been thinly covered with earth, in filing up the holes which the shells had ploughed in the ground, and in repairing the battered roofs of the houses. The recollection of past dangers and privations, and the con- sciousness of having deserved well of the English nation and of all Protestant Churches, swelled the hearts of the townspeople with honest pride. That pride grew stronger when they received from William a letter, acknowledging, in the most affectionate language, the debt which he owed to the brave and trusty citi- zens of his good city. The whole population crowded to the Diamond to hear the royal epistle read. At the close all the guns on the ramparts sent forth a voice of joy : all the ships in the river made answer : barrels of ale were broken up ; and the health of their Majesties was drunk with shouts and volleys of musketry. Five generations have since passed away ; and still the wall of Londonderry is to the, Protestants of Ulster what the trophy of Marathon was to the Athenians. A lofty pillar, rising from a bastion which bore during many weeks the heaviest fire of the enemy is seen far up and far down the Foyle. On the summit is the statue of Walker, such as when, in the last and most terri- ble emergency, his eloquence roused the fainting courage of his brethren. In one hand he grasps a Bible. The other pointing down the river, seems to direct the eyes of his famished audience to the English topmasts in the distant bay. Such a monument WILLIAM AND MART. 221 was well deserved : yet it was scarcely needed : for in truth the whole city is to this day a monument of the gre/it deliver- ance. The wall is carefully preserved ; nor would any plea of health or convenience be held by the inhabitants sufficient to justify the demolition of that sacred enclosure which, in the evil time, gave shelter to their race and their religion.* The sum- mit of the ramparts forms a pleasant walk. The bastions have been turned into little gardens. Here and there, among the shrubs and flowers, may be seen the old culverins which scattered bricks, cased with lead, among the Irish ranks. One antique gun, the gift of the Fishmongers of London, was distinguished, during the hundred and five memorable days, by the loudness of its report, and still bears the name of Roaring Meg. The cathedral is filled with relics and trophies. In the vestibule is a huge shell, one of many hundreds of shells which were thrown into the city. Over the altar are still seen the French flag- staves, taken by the garrison in a desperate sally. The white ensigns of the House of Bourbon have long been dnst : but their place has been supplied by new banners, the work of the fairest hands of Ulster. The anniversary of the day on which the gates were closed, and the anniversary of the day on which the siege was raised, have been down to our own time celebrated by salutes, processions, banquets, and sermons : Lundy has been executed in effigy ; and the sword, said by tradition to be that of Maumont, has, on great occasions, been carried in triumph. There is still a Walker Club and a Murray Club. The humble tombs of the Protestant captains have been carefully sought out, repaired, and embellished. It is impossible not to respect the sentiment which indicates itself by these tokens. It is a sentiment which belongs to the higher and purer part of human nature, and which adds not a little to the strength of states. A people which takes no pride in the noble achievements of remote ancestors will never achieve anything worthy to be remembered with pride by remote descendants. Yet it is impossible for the moralist or the statesman to look with un- * In a collection entitled " Periana," -which was published more than sixty years ago, is a curious letter on this subject. 222 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. mixed complacency on the solemnities with which Londonderry commemorates her deliverance, and on the honours which she pays to those who saved her. Unhappily the animosities of her brave champions have descended with their glory. The faults which are ordinarily found in dominant castes and dominant sects have not seldom shown themselves without disguise at her festivities ; and even with the expressions of pious gratitude which have resounded from her pulpits have too often been mingled words of wrath and defiance. The Irish army which had retreated to Strabane remained there but a very short time. The spirit of the troops had been depressed by their recent failure, and was soon completely cowed by the news of a great disaster in another quarter. Three weeks before this time the Duke of Berwick had gained an advantage over a detachment of the Enniskilleners, and had, by their own confession, killed or taken more than fifty of them. They were in hopes of obtaining some assistance from Kirke. to whom they had sent a deputation ; and they still persisted in rejecting all terms offered by the enemy. It was therefore determined at Dublin that an attack should be made upon them from several quarters at once. Macarthy, who had been rewarded for his services in Minister with the title of Viscount Mountcashel, marched towards Lough Erne from the east with three regiments of foot, two regiments of dragoons, and some troops of cavalry. A considerable force, which lay encamped near the mouth of the river Drowes, was at the same time to advance from the west. The Duke of Berwick was to come from the north, with such horse and dragoons as could be spared from the army which was besieging Londonderry. The Ennis- killeners were not fully apprised of the whole plan which had been laid for their destruction : but they knew that Macarthy was on the road with a force exceeding any which they could bring into the field. Their anxiety was in some degree relieved by the return of the deputation which they had sent to Kirke. Kirke could spare no soldiers : but he had sent some arms, some ammunition, and some experienced officers, of whom the chief were Colonel Wolseley and Lieutenant Colonel Berry. These WILLIAM AXD MART. 223 officers had come by sea round the coast of Donegal, and had run up the Erne. On Sunday, the twenty-ninth of July, it was known th:it their boat was approaching the island of Enniskillen. The whole population, male and female, came to the shore to greet them. It was with difficulty that they made their way to the Castle through the crowds which hung on them, blessing God that dear old England had not quite forgotten the English- men who were upholding her cause against great odds in the heart of Ireland. Wolseley seems to have been in every respect well qualified for his post. He was a stanch Protestant, had distinguished himself among the Yorkshiremen who rose up for the Prince of Orange and a free Parliament, and had, even before the landing of the Dutch army, proved his zeal for liberty and pure religion, by causing the Mayor of Scarborough, who had made a speech in favour of King James, to be brought into the marketplace and well tossed there in a blanket.* This vehement hatred of Popery was, in the estimation of the men of Enniskillen, the first of all the qualifications of a leader ; and Wolseley had other and more important qualifications. Though himself reg- ularly bred to war, he seems to have had a peculiar aptitude for the management of irregular troops. He had scarcely taken on himself the chief command when he received notice that Mountcashel had laid siege to the Castle of Crum. Crum was the frontier garrison of the Protestants of P'ermanagh. The ruins of the old fortifications are now among the attractions of a beautiful pleasureground, situated on a woody promontory which overlooks Lough Erne. Wolseley determined to raise the siege. He sent Berry forward with such troops as could be instantly put in motion, and promised to follow speedily with a larger force. Berry, after marching some miles, encountered thirteen com- panies of Macarthy's dragoons, commanded by Anthony, the most brilliant and accomplished of all who bore the name of Hamilton, but much less successful as a soldier than as a courtier, * Bernartli's Life of Himself, 1737. Wolseley's exploit at Scarborough la mentioned hi orie of the letters published by Sir Henry Ellis 224 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. a lover, and a writer. Hamilton's dragoons ran at the first fire : he was severely wounded ; and his second in command was shot dead. Macarthy soon came up to support Hamilton ; and at the same time Wolseley came up to support Berry. The hostile armies were now in presence of each other. Macarthy had above five thousand men and several pieces of artillery. The Enniskilleners were under three thousand ; and they had marched in such haste that they had brought only one day's provisions. It was therefore absolutely necessary for them either to fight instantly or to retreat. Wolseley determined to consult the men ; and this determination, which, in ordinary circumstances, would have been most unworthy of a general, was fully justified by the peculiar composition and temper of the little army, an army made up of gentlemen and yeomen fighting, not for pay, but for their lands, their wives, their children, and their God. The ranks were drawn up under arms ; and the question was put, " Advance or Retreat ?." The answer was an universal shout of " Advance." Wolseley gave out the word " No Popery." It was received with loud applause. He instantly made his dispositions for an attack. As he approached, the enemy, to his great surprise, began to retire. The Ennis- killeners were eager to pursue with all speed : but their com- mander, suspecting a snare, restrained their ardour and posi- tively forbade them to break their ranks. Thus one army retreated and the other followed, in good order, through the little town of Newton Butler. About a mile from that town the Irish faced about, and made a stand. Their position was well chosen. They were drawn up on a hill at the foot of which lay a deep bog. A narrow paved causeway which ran across the bog was the only road by which the cavalry of the Enniskilleners could advance ; for on the right and left were pools, turf pits and quagmires, which afforded no footing to horses. Macarthy placed his cannon in such_ a manner as to sweep this causeway. Wolseley ordered his infantry to the attack. They strug- gled through the bog, made their way to firm ground, and rushed on the guns. There was then a short and desperate fight. The Irish cannoneers stood gallantly to their pieces till they WILLIAM AND MARY. \ 225 were cut down to a man. The Enniskillen horse, no longer in danger of being mowed down by the fire of the artillery, came fast up the causeway. The Irish dragoons who had run away in the morning were smitten with another panic, and, without striking a blow, galloped from the field. The horse followed the example. Such was the terror of the fugitives that many of them spurred hard till their beasts fell down, and then continued to fiy on foot, throwing away carbines, swords, and even coats, as incumbrances. The infantry, seeing themselves deserted, flung down their pikes and muskets and ran for their lives. The conquerors now gave loose to that ferocity which has seldom failed to disgrace the civil wars of Ireland. The butchery was terrible. Near fifteen hundred of the vanquished were put to the sword. About five hundred more, in ignorance of the country, took a road which led to Lough Erne. The lake was before them ; the enemy behind : they plunged into the waters and perished there. Macarthy, abandoned by his troops, rushed into the midst of the pursuers, and very nearly found the death which he sought. He was wounded in several places : he was struck to the ground ; and in another moment his brains would have been knocked out with the butt end of a musket, when he was recognised and saved. The colonists lost only twenty men killed and fifty wounded. They took four hundred pris- oners, seven pieces of cannon, fourteen barrels of powder, all the drums and all the colours of the vanquished enemy.* The battle of Newton Butler was won on the third day after the boom thrown over the Foyle was broken. At Strabane the news met the Celtic army which was retreating from London- * Hamilton's True Relation; MacCormiek's Further Account ; London Gazette, Aug. 22, 1689 ; Life of James, ii. 368, 369 ; Avaux to Lewis, Aug. 4-14, and to Louvois of the same date. Story mentions a report that the panic among the Irish was caused by the mistake of an officer who called out " Eight about face " instead of " Right face." Neither Avaux nor James had heard anything about this mistake. Indeed the dragoons who set the example of flight were not in the habit of waiting for orders to turn their backs on an enemy. They had run away once before on that very day. Avaux gives a very simple account of the defeat : " Ces mesmes dragons qui avoient fuy le matin lesoherent le pied avec tout le reste de la cavalerie, sans tirer nn coup de pistolet ; etils s'enfuirent tous avec une telle epouvante qu'ils jetterent mousquetons, pistolets, et espe'es ; t la plunart d'eux, ayant creve leurs chevaux, se deshabillerent pour aller plus viste a pied." Vol. III. 15 226 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. derry. All was terror aud confusion : the tents were struck : the military stores were flung by waggon loads into the waters of the Mourne ; and the dismayed Irish, leaving many sick and wounded to the mercy of the victorious Protestants, fled to Omagh, and thence to Charlemont. Sarsfield, who commanded at Sligo, found it necessary to abandon that town, which was instantly occupied by a detachment of Kirke's troops.* Dublin was in consternation. James dropped words which indicated an intention of flying to the Continent. Evil tidings indeed came fast upon him. Almost at the same time at which he learned that one of his armies had raised the siege of Londonderry, and that another had been routed at Newton Butler, he received intelligence scarcely less disheartening from Scotland. It is now necessary to trace the progress of those events to which Scotland owes her political and her religious liberty, her prosperity, and her civilisation. < Hamilton's True Relation, WILLIAM AND MAUY. 227 CHAPTER XIII. THE violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not strange that the government of Scotland, having been during many years far more oppressive and corrupt than the government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the House of Stuart was in England conservative, in Scotland des- tructive. The English complained, not of the law, but of the violation of the law. They rose up against the first magistrate merely in order to assert the supremacy of the law. They were for the most part strongly attached to the Church estab- lished by law. Even in applying that extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary emergency compelled them to have re- course, they deviated as little as possible from the ordinary methods prescribed by the law. The Convention which met at Westminster, though summoned by irregular writs, was consti- tuted on the exact model of a regular Great Council of the Realm. No man was invited to the Upper House whose right to sit there was not clear. The knights and burgesses of the Lower House were chosen by those electors who would have been entitled to send members to a Parliament called under the great seal. The franchises of the forty shilling freeholder, of the householder paying scot and lot, of the burgage tenant, of the liveryman of London, of the Master of Arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of the constituent bodies was taken with as little violence on the part of mobs, with as little trickery on the part of returning officers, as at any general election of that age. When at length the Estates met, their delibera- tions were carried on with perfect freedom and in strict aQ 223 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. cordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the first flight of James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of the country. But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours. From the day on which William reached Saint James's, not even the most unpopular agents of the fallen government, not even the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church, had anything to fear from the fury of the populace. In Scotland the course of events was very different. There the law itself was a grievance ; and James had perhaps in- curred more unpopularity by enforcing it than by violating it. The Church established by law was the most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronounced some sentences so flagitious, the Parliament had passed some Acts so oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated as nul- lities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention commanding the public respect and expressing the public opin- ion. It was hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which nine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be expected that they would suffer the election of members for counties and towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law. For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that he renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowl- edged the Royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical.* Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian could take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies would have been merely small knots of prelatists : the business of devising securities against oppression would have been left to the oppressors ; and the great party which had been most active in effecting the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, have had not a single representative.! * Act. Part. Scot., Aug. 31, 1681. t Balcarras's Memoirs ; Short History of the Revolution in Scotland in a lev tr from a Scotch gentleman in Amsterdam to his friend in London, 3712. WILLIAM AND MARY. 229 William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland that scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the laws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine by his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some judgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the Parliament House several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences which the general voice loudly con- demned as unjust ; and he took on himself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of the elective franchise. The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party com- plained loudly of foul play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the presiding magistrates ; and these complaints were in many cases well founded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdule and Dundee that nations learn justice and moderation.* Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so long and so severely compressed, exploded with violence. The heads and the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth with solemn respect, f It would have been well if the public en- thusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form. Unhappily throughout a large part of Scotland the clergy of the Established Church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled. The morning of Christmas day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages. For nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the pre- latist to the ancient holidays of the Church. That such rever- ence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why religion should re- * Balcarras's Memoirs ; Life of James, ii. 341. 1 A Memorial for His Highness the Prince of Orange in relation to the Affair of Scotland, by two Persons of Quality, 1689. 230 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ject the aid of associations which exist in every nation sufficient- ly civilised to have a calendar, and which are found by ex- perience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and jurisprudence of the Jews might have found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence ; for it was in consequence of the stren- uous exertions of Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the citizens of Geneva.* But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was to Laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They long con- tinued in their solemn manifestoes to reckon it among the sins which would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the Court of Session took a vacation in the last week of December, f On Christmas day, therefore, the Covenanters held armed musters by concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the nearest manse, and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister which at that season were probably bet- ter stocked than usual. The priest of Baal was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was thrown out of the windows ; his wife and children turned * See Calvin's letter to Haller, iv. Non. Jan. 1551 : " Priusquam ttrbem un- quam ingrederer, nullse prorsus erant ferise prseter diem Dominicum. Ex quo sum revocatua hoc temperamentum quaesivi, ut Christ! natalis celebraretur." t In the Act, Declaration, and Testimony of the Seceders, dated in December 1736, it is said that countenance is given by authority of Parliament to the obser- vation of Holidays in Scotland, by the vacation of our most considerable Courts of Justice in the latter end of December." This is declared to be a national sin, and a ground of the Lord's indignation. In March, 175S, the Associate Synod addressed a Solemn Warning to the nation, in which the same complaint was repeated. A poor crazy creature, whose nonsense has been thought worthy of being reprinted even in our own time, says : "I leave my testimony against the abominable Act of the pretended Queen Anne and her pretended British, really Brutish Parliament, for enacting the observance of that which is called the Yule Vacance." The Dying Testimony of William Wilson, sometime School- master in Park, in the Parish of Douglas, aged 65, who died in 1757. WILLIAM AND MART. 231 out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market- place, aud exposed during some time as a malefactor. His gown was torn to shreds over his head ; if he had a prayer book in his pocket it was burned ; and he was dismissed with a charge, never, as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again. The work of reformation having been thus completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the keys. In fairness to these men it must be owned that they had suffered such oppression as may excuse, though it cannot justify, their violence ; and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional in- jury to life or limb.* The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithis- dale, Annandale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. About two hundred curates, so the episcopal parish priests were called, were expelled. The graver Covenanters, while they applauded the fervour of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular might give scandal, and learned, with especial concern, that here a id there an Achan had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A gen- eral meeting of ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such discreditable excesses. In this meeting it was determined that, for the future, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed in a more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served on every curate in the Western Lowlands who had not yet been rabbled. This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit his parish peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force. f The Scottish Bishops, in great dismay, sent the Dean of Glasgow to plead the cause of their persecuted Church at West- minster. The outrages committed by the Covenanters were in the highest degree offensive to William, who had, in the south * An Account of the Present Persecution of the Church in Scotland, in several Letters, 1690 ; The Case of the afflicted Clergy in Scotland, truly represented, 1690 Faithful Contending Displayed. Burnet, 1. 805. The form of notice will be found in the book entitled Faithful Contending Displayed. 232 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. of the island, protected even Benedictines and Franciscans from insult and spoliation. But, though he had at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentlemen of Scotland, taken on himself provisionally the executive administration of that kingdom, the means of maintaining order there were not at his command. He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed within many miles of that river. It was vain to hope that mere words would quiet a nation which had not, in any age, been very amenable to control, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such as great revolutions, following great oppressions, naturally engender. A proclamation was how- ever put forth, directing that all people should lay down their arms, and that, till the Convention should have settled the gov- ernment, the clergy of the Established Church should be suf- fered to reside on their cures without molestation. But this proclamation, not being supported by troops, was little regarded. On the very day after it was published at Glasgow, the venerable Cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the mid- dle ages which stands uninjured in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meeting houses, with whom were mingled many of their fiercer brethren from the hills. It was a Sunday : but to rabble a congregation of prelatists was held to be a work of necessity and mercy. The worshippers were dispersed, beaten, and pelted with snowballs. It was indeed asserted that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable weapons.* Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anar- chy. The Castle, which commanded the whole city, was still held for James by the Duke of Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College of Justice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers to the signet, and solicitors, was the stronghold of Toryism : for a rigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the depart- ments of the legal profession. The lawyers,some hundreds in mim- * Account of the Present Persecution, 1690 Case of the afflicted Clergy, 1690; A true Account of that Interruption that was made of the Service of God on Sun- day last, 'being the 17th of February, 1689, signed by James Gibson, acting for th Lord Provost of Glasgow. WILLIAM AND MARY. 233 her, formed themselves into a battalion of infantry, and for a time effectually kept down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respect to William's authority as to disband themselves when bis proclamation was published. But the example of obe- dience which they had set was not imitated. Scarcely had they laid down their weapons when Covenanters from the west, who had done all that was to be done in the way of pelting and hust- ling the curates of their own neighbourhood, came dropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose of protecting, or, if need should be, of overawing the Convention. Glasgow alone sent four hundred of these men. It could hardly be doubted that they were directed by some leader of great weight. They showed themselves little in any public place : but it was known that every cellar was filled with them : and it might well be apprehended that, at the first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns, and appear armed around the Parlia- ment House.* It might have been expected that every patriotic and en- lightened Scotchman would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased, and some government established which might be able to protect property and to enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedily made might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlement which must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party, strong both in numbers and in abilities, raised a new and most important question, which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till the autumn. This party maintained that the Estates ought not immediately to declare William and Mary King and Queen, but to propose to England a treaty of union, and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty should be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland, f It may seem strange that a large portion of a people, whose patriotism, exhibited, often in a heroic, and sometimes in a comic form, has long been proverbial, should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender an independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and manfully defended. The truth * Balcarras's Memoirs ; Mackay's Memoirs. t Burnet, ii. 2L 234 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. is that the stubborn spirit which the arms of the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to yield to a very different kind of force. Customhouses and tariffs were rapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halidon, of Flodden and Pinkie, had failed. to do. Scotland had some ex- perience of the effects of an union. She had, near forty years before, been united to England on such terms as England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. That union was in- separably associated in the minds of the vanquished people with defeat and humiliation. And yet even that union, cruelly as it had wounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity. Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the most complete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country. While he governed, no prohibition, no duty, impeded the transit of commodities from any part of the island to any other. His navigation laws im- posed no restraint on the trade of Scotland. A Scotch vessel was at liberty to carry a Scotch cargo to Barbadoes, and to bring the sugars of Barbadoes into the port of London.* The rule of the Protector therefore had been propitious to the industry and to the physical wellbeing of the Scottish people. Hating him and cursing him, they could not help thriving under him, and often, during the administration of their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of the usurper.! * Scobell, 1654, cap. 9 ; and Oliver's Ordinance in Council of the 12th of April in the same year. t Burnet and Fletcher of Saltoun mention the prosperity of Scotland under the Protector, but ascribe it to a cause quite inadequate to the production of such an effect. " There \vas," says Burnet, " a considerable force of about seven or eight thousand men kept in Scotland. The pay of the army brought so much money into the kingdom that it continued all that while in a very flourishing state We always reckon those eight years of usurpation a time of groat peace, and prosperity." " During the time of the usurper Cromwell," says Fletcher, " we imagined ourselves to be in a tolerable condition with respect to the last particular (trade and money) by reason of that expense which was made in the realm by those forces that kept us in subjection." The true explanation of the phenomena about which Burnet and Fletcher blundered so grossly will be found in a pamphlet entitled, " Some seasonable and modest Thoughts partly occasioned by and partly concerning the Scotch East India Company," Edin- ourgh, 1696. See the proceedings of the "Wednesday Club in Friday Street upon WILLIAM AND MART. 235 The Restoration came, and changed everything. The Scots regained their independence, and soon began to find that inde- pendence had its discomfort as well as its dignity. The English Parliament treated them as aliens and as rivals. A new Navi- gation Act put them on almost the same footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in some case prohibitory duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is not wonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd, and enterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil and a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these disadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated, Yet there was no help. Complaint was vain. Retaliation was impossible. The Sovereign, even if he had the wish, had not the power, to bear himself evenly between his large and his small kingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of a million and a half and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of little more than sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refuse his assent to any English law injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor to give his assent to any Scotch law inju- rious to the trade of England. The complaints of the Scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in 1GG7, appointed Commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercial treaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon broken off; and all that passed while they continued proved that there was only one way in which Scotland could obtain a share of the commercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed.* The Scotch must be- come one people with the English. The parliament which had hitherto sate at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the Par- liament which sate at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully felt by a brave and haughty people, who had, during twelve generations, regarded the southern domination the subject of an Union with, Scotland, December 1705. See also the seventh Chapter of Mr. Burton's valuable History of Scotland. * See the paper in which the demands of the Scotch Commissioners are set forth. It will be found in the Appendix to De Foe's History of the Union, No 13. 2oG HISTORY OF ENGLAND. with deadly aversion, and whose hearts still swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and of the triumphs of Bruce. There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have strenuously opposed an union even if they could have foreseen that the effect of an union would be to make Glasgow a greater city than Amsterdam, and to cover the dreary Lo- thians with harvests and woods, neat farmhouses and stately mansions. But there was also a large class which was not dis- posed to throw away great and substantial advantages in order to preserve mere names and ceremonies ; and the influence of this class was such that, in the year 1G70, the Scotch Parlia- ment made direct overtures to England.* The King uudei took the office of mediator ; and negotiators were named on both sides ; but nothing was concluded. The question, having slept during eighteen years, was sud- denly revived by the Revolution. Different classes, impelled by different motives, concurred on this poi::t. With merchants, eager to share m the advantages of the West Indian Trade, were joined active and aspiring politicians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuous theatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from a more copious source than the Scottish treasury. Tbe cry for union was swelled by the voices of some artful Jacobites, who merely wished to cause discord and delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing up with the difficult question which it was the especial business of the Convention to settle another question more difficult still. It is probable that some who disliked the ascetic habits and rigid discipline of the Presbyterians wished for an union as the only mode of maintaining prelacy in the northern part of the island. In an united Parliament the Eng- lish members must greatly preponderate ; and in England the Bishops were held in high honour by the great majority of the population. The Episcopal Church of Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis, and would fall before the first attack. The Episcopal Church of Great Britain might have a founda- tion broad and solid enough to withstand all assaults, Act. Parl. Scot., July 30, 1670. WILLIAM AND MART. 237 Whether, in 1689, it would have been possible to effect a civil union without a religious union may well be doubted. But there can be no doubt that a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamities that could have befallen either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707 has indeed been a great blessing both to England and to Scotland. But it has been a blessing because, in constituting one State, it left two churches. The political interest of the contracting parties was the same : but the ecclesiastical dispute between them was one which admitted of no compromise. They could therefore pre- serve harmony only by agreeing to differ. Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies, there never would have been an amalgamation of the nations. Successive Mitchells would have fired at successive Sharpes. Five generations of Claver- houses would have butchered five generations of Camerons. Those marvellous improvements which have changed the face of Scotland would never have been effected. Plains now rich with harvests would have remained barren moors. Waterfalls which now turn the wheels of immense factories would have resounded in a wilderness. New Lanark would still have been a sheepwalk, and Greenock a fishing hamlet. What little strength Scotland could, under such a system, have possessed must, in an 'estimate of the resources of Great Britain, have been, not added, but deducted. So encumbered, our country never could have held, either in peace or in war, a place in the first rank of nations. We are unfortunately not without the means of judging of the effect which may be produced on the moral and physical state of a people by establishing, in the exclusive enjoyment of riches and dignity, a Church loved and reverenced only by the few, and regarded by the many with religious and national aversion. One such Church is quite burden enough for the energies of one empire. But these things, which to us, who have been taught by a bitter experience, seem clear, were by no means clear in 1689, even to very tolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English Low Churchmen were, if possible, more anxious than the English High Churchmen to preserve Episcopacy in Scot- 238 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. land. It is a remarkable fact that Burnet, who was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinistic discipline in the south of the island, incurred great unpopularity among his OWK countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in the north. He was doubtless in error : but his error is to be attributed to a cause which does him no discredit. His favourite object, an object unattainable indeed, yet such as might well fascinate a large intellect and a benevolent heart, had long been an honour- able treaty between the Anglican Church and the Nonconfor- mists. He thought it most unfortunate that one opportunity of concluding such a treaty should have been lost at the time of the Restoration. It seemed to him that another opportunity was afforded by the Revolution. He and his friends were eagerly pushing forward Nottingham's Comprehension Bill, and were flattering themselves with vain hopes of success. But they felt that there could hardly be a Comprehension in one of the two British kingdoms, unless there were also a Comprehen- sion in the other. Concession must be purchased by concession. If the Presbyterian pertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he was strong, it would be almost impossi- ble to obtain for him liberal terms of compromise where he was weak. Bishops must therefore be allowed to keep their sees in Scotland, in order that divines not ordained by Bishops might be allowed to hold rectories and canonries in England. Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of the Presbyterians in the south were bound up together in a manner which might well perplex even a skilful statesman. It was happy for our country that the momentous question which excited so many strong passions, and which presented itself in so many different points of views, was to be decided by such a man as William. He listened to Episcopalians, to Latitudinarians, to Presbyterians to the Dean of Glasgow who pleaded for the apostolic succession, to Burnet who represented the danger of alienating the Anglican clergy, to Carstairs who hated prelacy with the hatred of a man whose thumbs were deeply marked by the screws of prelatists. Surrounded by these eager advocates, William remained calm and impartial. He WILLIAM AND MARY. 239 was indeed eminently qualified by his situation as well as by his personal qualities to be the umpire in that great contention. lie was the King of a prelatical kingdom. He was the Prime Minister of a Presbyterian republic. His unwillingness to offend the Anglican Church of which he was the head, and his unwillingness to offend the* reformed Churches of the Continent O which regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the French tyranny, balanced each other, and kept him from leaning unduly to either side. His conscience was per- fectly neutral. For it was his deliberate opinion that no fc form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine institution. He dissented equally from the school of Laud and from the school of Cameron, from the men who held there could not be a Christian Church without Bishops, and from the men who held that there could not be a Christian Church without synods. Which form of government should be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere expediency. He would probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems, a hierarchy in which the chief spiritual functionaries should have been something more than moderators and something less than prelates. But he was far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according to his own personal tastes. He determined therefore that, if there was on both sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as mediator. But, if it should appear that the public mind of England and the public mind of Scotland had taken the ply strongly in opposite directions, he would not attempt to force either nation into conformity with the opinion of the other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and would content himself with restraining both churches from persecuting non- conformists, and from encroaching on the functions of the civil magistrate. The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians who complained to him of their sufferings and implored his protection was well weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he said, to preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were so much attached, and to grant, at the same time, entire liberty of conscience to that party HISTORY OF ENGLAND. which could not be reconciled to any deviation from the Pres- byterian model. But the Bishops must take care that they did not, by their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his power to be of any use to them. They must also distinctly understand that he was resolved not to force on Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiastical government which she detested. If, there- fore, it should be found that prelacy could be maintained only by arms, he should yield to the general sentiment, and should merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalian minority per- mission to worship God in freedom and safety.* It is not likely that, even if the Scottish Bishops had, as William recommended, done all that meekness and prudence could do to conciliate their countrymen, episcopacy could, under any modification, have been maintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation, and has been repeated by writers of our generation, that the Presbyterians were not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people of Scotland.! But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effective strength of sects is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. An established church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusive possession of civil honours and emoluments, will always rank among its nominal members multitudes who have no religion at all ; multitudes who, though not destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes, and have no scruple about conforming to the mode of worship which happens to be established; and multitudes who have scruples about conforming, but whose scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On the other hand, every member of an oppressed church is a man who has a very decided preference for that church. Every person who, in the time of Diocletian, joined in celebrating the Chris- tian mysteries might reasonably be supposed to be a firm believer in Christ. But it may well be doubted whether one single * Burnet, ii. 23. t See, for example, a pamphlet entitled " Some questions resolved concerning episcopal and presbyterian government in Scotland, 1690." One of the questions is, whether Scottish presbytery be agreeable to the general inclinations of that ceople. The author answers the question in the negative, on tho ground that the upper and middle classes had generally conformed to the episcopal Church before the Involution. WILLIAM AXD MART. 241 Pontiff or Augur in the Roman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In Mary's reign, everybody who attended the secret meetings of the Protestants was a real Protestant : but hundreds of thousands went to mass who, as appeared before she had been dead a month, were not real Roman Catholics. If, under the Kings of the House of Stuart, when a Presbyterian was excluded from political power and from the learned professions, was daily annoyed by informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by licen- tious dragoons, and was in danger of being hanged if he heard a sermon in the open air, the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided between Episcopalians and Presbyteri- ans, the rational inference is that more than nineteen twentieths of those Scotchmen whose conscience was interested in the matter were Presbyterians, and that the Scotchmen, who were decidedly and on conviction Episcopalians, were a small minori- ty. Against such odds the Bishops had but little chance ; and whatever chance they had they made haste to thjrow away ; some of them because they sincerely believed that their allegi- ance was still due to James ; others probably because they apprehended that William would not have the power, even if he had the will, to serve them, and that nothing but a counterrevo- lution in the State could avert a revolution in the Church. As the new King of England could not be at Edinburgh during the sitting of the Scottish Convention, a letter Irom him to the Estates was prepared with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachment to the Protestant religion, but gave no opinion touching those questions about which Protes- tants were divided. He had observed, he said, with great satis- faction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry with whom he had conferred in London were inclined to an union of the two British kingdoms. He was sensible how much such an union would conduce to the happiness of both ; and he would do all in his power towards the accomplishing of so good a work. It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to his confidential agents at Edinburgh. The private instructions with which he furnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious. lie charged them to ascertain to the VOL. III. 16 242 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. best of their power the real sense of the Convention, and to be guided by it. They must remember that the first object was to settle the government. To that object every other object, even the union, must be postponed. A treaty between two in- dependent legislatures, distant from each other several days' journey, must necessarily be a work of time ; and the throne could not safely remain vacant while the negotiations were pending. It was therefore important that His Majesty's agents should be on their guard against the arts of persons who, under pretence of promoting the union, might really be contriving only to prolong the interregnum. If the Convention should be bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church govern- ment, William desired that his friends would do all in their power to prevent the triumphant sect from retaliating what it had suffered.* The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this time chiefly guided as to Scotch politics was a Scotchman of great abilities and attainments, Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family eminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the senate, in diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also by misfortunes and misdeeds which have fur- nished poets and novelists with materials for the darkest and most heartrending tales. Already Sir James had been in mourn- ing for more than one strange and terrible death. One of his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poniarded her bride- groom on the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boy- ish sport been slain by another. Savage libellers asserted, and some of the superstitious vulgar believed, that calamities so por- tentous were the consequences of some connection between the unhappy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James had a wry neck ; and he was reproached with this misfortune as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked him out as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability, * The instructions are in the Leven and Melville Papers. They bear date March 7, 1688-9. On the first occasion on which I quote this most valuable col- lection, I cannot refrain from acknowledging the obligations under which I, and all who take an interest in the history of our island, lie to the gentleman who haa performed so well the duty of an editor. WILLIAM AND MART. 243 art, and spirit, was popularly nicknamed the "Witch of Eridor. It was gravely said that she had cast fearful spells on those whom she hated, and that she had been seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth of state by the side of the Lord High Com- missioner. The man, however, over whose roof so many curses appeared to hang, did not, as far as we can now judge, fall short of that very low standard of morality which was generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force of mind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youth he had borne arms : he had then been a professor of philosophy : he had then studied law, and had become, by general acknowledgment, the greatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the Protectorate, he had been a judge. After the Restoration, he had made his peace with the royal family, had sate in the Privy Council, and had presided with unrivalled ability in the Court of Session. He had doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts ; but there were limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving to any proposition which it suited him to maintain a plausible aspect of legality and even of justice ; and this power he fre- quently abused. But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently and unscrupulously servile. Shame and conscience generally restrained him from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not frame a spe- cious defence ; and he was seldom in his place at the council boards when anything outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His moderation at length gave offence to the Court. He was deprived of his high office, and found himself in so disagree- able a situation that he retired to Holland. There he employed himself in correcting the great work on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our own time. In his banish- ment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow exiles, who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He protested, and per- haps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted Covenanters. He made a high profession of religion, prayed much, and observed weekly days of fasting and humilia- tion. He even consented, after much hesitation, to assist with 244 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. his advice and his credit the unfortunate enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had failed, a prosecution was instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple ; and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated, had they not been saved by an artifice which subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent, John, took the side of the government, supported the dispensing power, declared against the Test, and accepted the place of Lord Advocate, when Sir George Mackenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services indeed were not to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great and various : his parts were quick ; and his eloquence was singularly ready and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed Epis- copalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as little better than an atheist. During some months Sir John at Edin- burgh affected to condemn the disloyalty of his unhappy parent Sir James ; and Sir James at Leyden told his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliances of his unhappy child Sir John. The Revolution came, and brought a large increase of wealth and honours to the House of Stair. The son promptly changed sides, and cooperated ably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in London 1 for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was not likely to find any equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to exert all his powers against the dynasty which he had lately served.* * As to the Dalrymples, see the Lord President's own writings, and among them his Vindication of the Divine Perfections ; Wodrow's Analecta ; Douglas's Peerage ; Lockharl's Memoirs ; the Satyre on the F;vmilie of Stairs ; the Satyric lines upon the long wished for and timely Death of the Eight Honourable Lady Stairs : Law's Memorials ; and the Hyndford Papers, written in 1701-5 and printed with the Letters of Carstairs. Lockhart, though a mortal enemy of John Dalrymple, says, " There was none in the parliament capable to take up the cudgels with him." WILLIAM AND MARY. 245 By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic church government John Dalrymple was regarded with incurable distrust and dislike. It was therefore necessary that another agent should be employed to manage that party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Melville, a nobleman connected by affinity with the unfortunate Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had, in 1640, invaded England at the head of a Scottish army. Melville had always been accounted a Whig and a Pres- byterian. Those who speak of him most favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual endowment or exalted public spirit. But he appears from his letters to have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the want of which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of purer virtue. That prudence had restrained him from going very far in opposition to the tyranny of the Stuarts : but he had list- ened while his friends talked about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plot was discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the Continent. In his absence he was accused of treason, and was convicted on evidence which would not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to death : his honour and lands were declared forfeit : his arms were torn with con- tumely out of the Heralds' Book ; and his domains swelled the estate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive meanwhile with characteristic wariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and discountenanced the unhappy projects of his kinsman Monmouth, but cordially approved of the enterprise of the Prince of Orange. Illness had prevented Melville from* sailing with the Dutch expedition ; but he arrived in London a few hours after the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh, in the hope, as it should seem, that the Presbyterians would be disposed to listen to moderate coun- sels proceeding from a man who was attached to their cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville's second son, David, who had inherited, through his mother, the title of Earl of Leven, and who had acquired some military experience in the service of the Elector of Brandenburgh, had the honour of be* 246 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. ing the bearer of a letter from the new King of England to the Scottish Convention.* James had entrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to John Graham, Viscount Dundee, and Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcarras. Dundee had commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into England to oppose the Dutch : but he had found, in the inglorious campaign which had been fatal to the dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displaying the courage and military skill which those who most detest his merciless nature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far from Watford, when he was informed that Jarnes had fled from Whitehall and that Feversham had ordered all the royal army to disband. The Scottish regiments were thus left, with- out pay or provisions, in the midst of a foreign and indeed a hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with grief and rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived from various quarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots would remain quiet, he would pledge his honour for their safe- ty ; and, some hours later, it was known that James had re- turned to his capital. Dundee repaired instantly to London.f There he met his friend Balcarras, who had just arrived from Edinburgh. Balcarras a man distinguished by his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in his youth, affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the popular cause, had accepted a seat in the Privy Council, had become a tool of Perth and Melfort, and had been one of the Commissioners who were appointed to execute the office of Treasurer, when Queensbury was disgraced for refusing to betray the interests of the Pro- testant religion, t Dundee and Balcarras went together to Whitehall, and had the honour of accompanying James in his last walk up and down the Mall. He told them that he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their management. " You, my Lord Bal- * As to Melville, see the Leven and Melville Papers, Passim, and the preface; the Act. Parl. Soot., June 16, 1685 ; and the Appendix, June 13 ; Burnet, ii. 24 ; and the Burnet ATS. Hart. 6584. Creichton's Memoirs. t Mackay's Memoirs. WILLIAM AND MARY. 247 carras, must undertake the civil business : and you, my Lord Dundee, shall have a commission from me to command the troops." The two noblemen vowed that they would prove themselves deserving of his confidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with the Prince of Orange.* On the following day James left Whitehall for ever ; and the Prince of Orange arrived at Saint James's. Both Dundee and Balcarras swelled the crowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciously received. Both were well known to him. Dundee bad served under him on the Conti- nent ; f and the first wife of Balcarras had been a lady of the House of Orange, and had worn on her wedding day, a superb pair of emerald earrings, the gift of her cousin the Prince. $ The Scottish Whigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster, earnestly pressed William to proscribe by name four or five men who had, during the evil^times, borne a con- spicuous part in the proceedings of the Privy Council at Edin- burgh. Dundee and Balcarras were particularly mentioned. But the Prince had determined that, as far as his power ex- tended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, * Memoirs of the Lindsays. t About the early relation between "William and Dundee, some Jacobite, many years after they were both dead, invented a story which by successive embellish- ments was at last improved into a romance such as it seems strange that even a child should believe to be true. The last edition runs thus. William's horse was killed under him at Seneff, and his life was iu imminent danger. Dundee, then Captain G naham, mounted His Highness again. William promised to re- ward this service with promotion, but broke his word, and give to another the commission which Graham had been led to expect. The injured hero went to Loo. There he met his successful competitor and gave him a box on the ear. The punishment for striking in the palace was the loss of the offending right hand ; but this punishment the Prince of Orange ungraciously remitted. " You," ho said, "saved my life: I spare your right hand ; and now we are quits." Those who, down to our time, have repeated this nonsense seem to have thought, first, that the Act of Henry the Eighth " for punishment of murder and malicious bloodshed within the King's Court" (Stat.33 Hen. VIII. c. 2) was law in Guelders ; and, secondly, that, in lf>74, William was a King, and his house a King's Court. They were also not aware that he did not purchase Loo till long after Dundee had left the Netherlands. See Harris's Description of Loo, 1699. This legend, of which I have not been able to discover the slightest trace in the voluminous Jacobite literature of William's reign, seems to have originated about a quarter of a century after Dundee's death, and to have attained its full absurdity in another quarter of a century. t Memoirs of the Lindsays. 248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. and absolutely refused to make any declaration which could drive to despair even the most guilty of his uncle's servants. Balcarras went repeatedly to Saint James's, had several audiences of William, professed deep respect for His Highness, and owned that King James had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur in a vote of deposition. William gave BO signs of displeasure, but said at parting; "Take care, my Lord, that you keep within the law ; for, if you break it, you must expect to be left to it."* Dundee sterns to have been less ingenuous. He employed the mediation of Burnet, opened a negotiation with Saint James's, declared himself willing to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from William a promise of protection, and promised in return to live peaceably. Such credit was given to his professions, that he was suffered to travel down to Scotland under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such an escort the man of blood, wliose name was never mentioned but with a shudder at the hearth of any Presbyterian family, would, at that conjuncture, have had but a perilous journey through Berwick- shire and the Lothians.t February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcarras reached Edinburgh. They had some hope that they might be at the head of a majority in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorously to consolidate and -animate their party. They assured the rigid royalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked by an usurper, that the rightful K.ing particularly wished no friend of hereditary mon- archy to be absent. More than one waverer was kept steady by being assured, in confident terms, that a speedy restoration was inevitable. Gordon had determined to surrender the Castle, and had begun to remove his furniture : but Dundee and Bal- carras prevailed on him to hold out some time longer. They informed him that they had received from Saint Germains full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that, if things went ill at Edinburgh, those powers would be used.J * Memoirs of the Lindsays. t Buruet, ii. 22 ; Memoirs of the Lindsays, t Bak-arras'e Memoirs, WILLIAM AND MART. 249 At length the fourteenth of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the Estates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded. Nine prelates were in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lord protested against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence, passed in due form and still unreversed, had deprived of the honours of the peerage. But this objection was overruled by the general sense of the assembly. When Melville appeared, no voice was raised against his admission. The Bishop of Edinburgh officiated as chaplain, and made it one of his petitions that God would help and re- store King James.* It soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by no means in harmony with this prayer. The 'first matter to be decided was the choice of a president. The Duke of Hamilton was supported by t r e W^iigs, the Marquess of Athol by the Jacobites. Neither can- didate possessed, and neither deserved, the q^tire confidence of his supporters. Hamilton had been a Privy Councillor of James, had borne a part in many unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a very cautious and languid opposition to the most daring attacks on the laws and religion of Scotland. Not till the Dutcn guards were at Whitehall had he ventured to speak out. Then he had joined the victorious party, and had assured the Whigs that he had pretended to be their enemy, only in order that he might, without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athol was still less to be trusted. His abilities were mean, his temper false, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gained a dishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of which he had been guilty in Argyleshire. He had turned with the turn of fortune, and had paid servile court to the Prince of Orange, but had been coldly received, and had now, from mere mortification, come back to the party which he had deserted, f Neither of the rival noblemen had chosen to stake the dignities and lauds of his house on the issue of the * Act. Parl. Scot., Mar. 14, 1689 ; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690 ; An Account of tlio Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, fol. Lond. 1G89. t B.-ilcarras's narra' ive exhibits both Hamilton and Athol in a most unfavour- able light. See also the Life of James, ii. 38, 339. 250 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. contention between the rival Kings. The eldest son of Ham- ilton had declared for James, and the eldest son of Athol for William, so that, in any event, both coronets and both estates were safe. But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political morality were lax ; and the aristocratical sentiment was strong. The Whigs were therefore willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the council cf James. The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athol had lately fawned on William. In political inconsistency those two great lords were far indeed from standing by themselves ; but in dignity and power they had scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their descent was emi- nently illustrious : their influence was immense: one of them could raise the Western Lowlands ; the other could bring into the field an army of northern mountaineers. Round these chiefs therefore the hos(^ factions gathered. The votes were counted ; and it appeared that Hamilton had a majority of forty. The consequence was that about forty of the defeated party instantly passed over to the victors.* At Westminster such a defection would have been thought strange : but it seems to have caused little surprise at Edinburgh. It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes of human nature. No class of men mentioned in history has ever adhered to a principle with more inflexible per- tinacity than was found among the Scotch Puritans. Fine and imprisonment, the shears and the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew, and the gallows could not extort from the stub- born Covenanter one evasive word on which it was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system. Even in things indifferent he would hear of no compromise ; and he was but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand, the Scotchmen of that generation who made a figure in the Parliament House and in the Council Chamber were the most * Act. Parl. Scot., March 14th, 1688-9 ; Balcarras's Memoirs ; History of the late Revolution in Scotland ; Life of James, it. 342. WILLIAM AND MARY. 251 dishonest and unblushing tiineservers that the world has ever seen. The English marvelled alike at both classes. There were indeed many stouthearted nonconformists in the South ; but scarcely any who in obstinacy, pugnacity, and hardihood could bear a comparison with the men of the school of Cameron. There were many knavish politicians in the South ; but few so utterly destitute of morality, and still fewer so utterly destitute of shame, as the men of the school of Lauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent vice should be found in the near neighbourhood of unreasonable and impracti- cable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or to be de- stroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience, it is not strange that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business. The majority, reinforced by the crowd of deserters from the minority, proceeded to name a Committee of Elections. Fif- teen persons were chosen, and it soon appeared that twelve of these were not disposed to examine severely into the regularity of any proceeding of which the result had been to send up a Whig to the Parliament House. The Duke of Hamilton is said to have been disgusted by the gross partiality of his own fol- lowers, and to have exerted himself, with but little success, to restrain their violence.* Before the Estates proceeded to deliberate on the business for which they had met, they thought it necessary to provide for their own security. They could not be perfectly at ease while the roof under which they sate was commanded by the batteries of the Castle. A deputation was therefore sent to in- form Gordon that the Convention required him to evacuate the fortress within twenty-four hours, and that if he complied, his past conduct should not be remembered against him. He asked a night for consideration. During that night his wavering mind was confirmed by the exhortations of Dundee and Balcarras. On the morrow he sent an answer drawn in respectful but eva- sive terms. He was very far, he declared, from meditating * Balearras's Memoirs ; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690. 252 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. harm to the City of Edinburgh. Least of all could he harbour any thought of molesting an august assembly which he regarded with profound reverence. He would willingly give bond for his good behaviour to the amount of twenty thousand pounds sterling. But he was in communication with the government now established in England. He was in hourly expectation of important despatches from that government ; and, till they ar- rived, he should not feel himself justified in resigning his com- mand. These excuses were not admitted. Heralds and trump- eters were sent to summon the Castle in form and to denounce the penalties of high treason against those who should continue to occupy that fortress in defiance of the authority of the Estates. Guards were at the same time posted to intercept all communi- cation between the garrison and the city.* Two days had been spent in these preludes, and it was ex- pected that on the third morning the great contest would begin. Meanwhile the population of Edinburgh was in an excited state. It had been discovered that Dundee had paid visits to the Castle ; and it was believed that his exhortations had induced the garri- son to hold out. His own soldiers were known to be gathering round him ; and it might well be apprehended that he would make some desperate attempt. He, on the other hand, had been informed that the Western Covenanters who filled the cellars of the city, had vowed vengeance on him : and, in truth, when we consider that their temper was singularly savage and implacable, that they had been taught to regard the slaying of a persecutor as a duty, that no examples furnished by Holy Writ had been more frequently held up to their admiration than Ehud stabbing Eglon and Samuel hewing Agag limb from limb, that they had never heard any achievement in the history of their own country more warmly praised by their favourite teachers than the butch- ery of Cardinal Beatoun and of Archbishop Sharpe, we may well wonder that a man who had shed the blood of the saints like water should have been able to walk the High Street in * Act. Parl. Scot., March 14, and 15, 1689 ; Balearras's Memoirs ; London Gaz. March 2," ; History of th late RevoHiJtion in Scotland, 1690 ; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1889. WILLIAM AND MART. 253 safety during a single day. The enemy whom Dundee had most reason to fear was a youth of distinguished courage aiid abilities named William Cleland. Cleland had, when little more than sixteen years old, borne arms in that insurrection which had been put down at Both well Bridge. He had since disgusted some virulent fanatics by his humanity and moderation. But with the great body of Presbyterians his name stood high. For with the strict morality and ardent zeal of a Puritan he united some accomplishments of which few Puritans could boast. His manners were polished, and his literary and scientific attainments respectable. He was a linguist, a mathematician, and a poet. It is true that his hymns, odes, ballads, and Hudibrastic satires are of very little intrinsic value ; but, when it is considered that he was a mere boy when most of them were written, it must be admitted that they show considerable vigour of mind. He was now at Edinburgh : his influence among the "West Country Whigs assembled there was great : he hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to be meditating some act of violence.* On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of the Covenanters had bound themselves together to slay him and Sir George Mackenzie, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the service of tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than any other man of the gown. * See Cleland's Poems, and the commendatory poems contained in the same volume, Edinburgh, 1C97. It has been repeatedly asserted that this William Cleland was the father of William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes, who was well known twenty years later in the literary society of London, who rendered some not very reputable services to Pope, and whose son John was the author of an infamous book but too widely celebrated. This is an entire mistake. William Cleland, who fought at Bothwell Bridge, was not twenty-eight when he was killed in August 1G89 ; and William Cleland, the Commissioner of Taxes, died at sixty-seven in September 1741. The former therefore cannot have been, the father of the latter. See the Exact Narrative of the battle of Dunkeld ; the Gentleman's Magazine for 174C; and Warburtoii's note on the Letter to the Publisher of the Dunciad, a letter signed W. Cleland, but really written by Pope. In a paper drawn up by Sir Robert Hamilton, the oracle of the extreme Coven- anters, and a bloodthirsty ruffian, Cleland is mentioned as having been once leagued with those fanatics, but afterwards a great opposer of their testimony. Cleland probably did not agree with Hamilton in thinking it a sacred duty to cut the throats of prisoners of war who had been received to quarters. See Hamil- ton's Letter to the Societies, Dec. 7, 1685. 254 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. Dundee applied to Hamilton for protection ; and Hamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of the' Convention at the" next sitting.* Before that sitting a person named Crane arrived from France with a letter addressed by the fugitive King to the Estates. The letter was sealed : the bearer, strange to say, was not furnished with a copy for the information of the heads of the Jacobite party ; nor did he bring any message, written or ver- bal, to either of James's agents. Balcarras and Dundee were mortified by finding that so little confidence was reposed in them, and were harassed by painful doubts touching the contents of the document on which so much depended. They were willing, however, to hope for the best. King James could not, situated as he was, be so ill adfised as to act in direct opposition to the counsel and entreaties of his friends. His letter, when opened, must be found to contain such gracious assurances as would animate the royalists and conciliate the moderate Whigs. His adherents, therefore, determined that it should be produced. When the Convention reassembled on the morning of Sat- urday the sixteenth of March, it was proposed that measures should be taken for the personal security of the members. It was alleged that the life of Dundee had been threatened ; that two men of sinister appearance had been watching the house where he lodged, and had been heard to say that they would use the dog as he had used them. Mackenzie complained that he too was in danger, and, with his usual copiousness and force of language, demanded the protection of the Estates. But the matter was lightly treated by the majority : and the Convention passed on to other business. f It was then announced that Crane was at the door of the Parliament House. He was admitted. The paper of which he was in charge was laid on the table. Hamilton remarked that there was, in the hands of the Earl of Leven, a communication * Balearras's Memoirs. t Balcarras's Memoirs. But the fullest account of these proceeding is fur- nished by some manuscript notes which are in the library of the Faculty of Ad- vocates. Balcarras's dates are not quite exact. He probably trusted to his memory for them. I have corrected them from the parliamentary record. WILLIAM AND MART. 255 from the Prince by whose authority the Estates had been con- voked. That communication seemed to be entitled to prece- dence. The Convention was of the same opinion ; arid the well weighed and prudent letter of William was read. It was then moved that the letter of James should be opened. The Whigs objected that it might possibly contain a mandate dissolving the Convention. They therefore proposed that, be- fore the seal was broken, the Estates should resolve to con- tinue sitting, notwithstanding any such mandate. The Jac- obites, who knew no more than the Whigs what was in the letter, and were impatient to have it read, eagerly assented. A vote was passed by which the members bound themselves to consider any order which should command them to separate as a nullity, and to remain assembled till they should have accomplished the work of securing the liberty and religion of Scotland. This vote was signed by almost all the lords and gentlemen who were present. Seven out of nine bishops subscribed it. The names of Dundee and Balcarras, written by their own hands, may still be seen on the original roll. Balcarras afterwards ex- cused what, on his principles, was, beyond all dispute, a flagrant act of treason, by saying that he and his friends had, from zeal for their master's interest, concurred in a declaration of rebellion against their master's authority ; that they had anticipated the most salutary effects from the letter ; and that, if they had not made some concession to the majority, the letter would not have been opened. In a few minutes the hopes of Balcarras were grievously disappointed. The letter from which so much had been hoped and feared was read with all the honours which Scottish Par- liaments were in the habit of paying to royal communications : but every word carried despair to the hearts of the Jacobites. It was plain that adversity had taught James neither wisdom nor mercy. All was obstinacy, cruelty, insolence. A pardon was promised to those traitors who should return to their allegiance within a fortnight. Against all others unsparing vengeance was de- nounced. Not only was no sorrow expressed for past offences : but the letter was itself a new offence : for it was written and 256 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. countersigned by the apostate Melfort, who was, by the statutes of the realm, incapable of holding the office of Secretary, and who was not less abhorred by the Protestant Tories than by the Whigs. The hall was in a tumult. The enemies of James were l<4ud and vehement. His friends, angry with him, and ashamed of him, saw that it was vain to think of continuing the struggle in the Convention. Every vote which had been doubt- ful when his letter was unsealed was now irrecoverably lost. The sitting closed in great agitation.* It was Saturday afternoon. There was to be no other meeting till Monday morning. The Jacobite leaders held a consultation, and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to take a decided step. Dundee and Balcarras must use the powers with which they had been entrusted. The minority must forthwith leave Edinburgh and assemble at Stirling. Athol assented, and undertook to bring a great body of his clansmen from the Highlands to protect the deliberations of the Royalist Convention. Everything was arranged for the secession ; but, in a few hours, the tardiness of one man and the haste of an- other ruined the whole plan. The Monday came. The Jacobite lords and gentlemen were actually taking horse for Stirling, when Athol asked for a delay of twenty-four hours. He had no personal reason to be in haste. By staying he ran no risk of being assassinated. By going he incurred the risks inseparable from civil war. The members of his party, unwilling to separate from him, consent- ed to the postponement which he requested, and repaired once more to the Parliament House. Dundee alone refused to stay a moment longer. His life was in danger. The Convention had refused to protect him. He would not remain to be a mark for the pistols and daggers of murderers. Balcarras expostu- lated to no purpose. " By departing alone," he said, " you will give the alarm and break up the whole scheme." But Dundee was obstinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems, *Act. Parl. Scot., March 16, 1688-9; Balcarras's Memoirs; History of the late Revolution in Scotland, 1690 ; Account of the Proceedings of the Estates of Scotland, 1689 ; London Gaz., March 25, 1689 ; Life of James, ii. 342. Burnet blunders strangely about these transactions. WILLIAM AND MARY. 257 like many other brave men, to have been less proof against the danger of assassination than against any other form of danger. He knew what the hatred of the Covenanters was : he knew how well he had earned their hatred ; and he was haunted by that consciousness of inexpiable guilt, and by that dread of a terrible retribution, which the ancient polytheists personified under the awful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satan s and Beelzebubs who had shared his crimes, and who now shared his perils, were ready to be the companions of his flight. Meanwhile the Convention had assembled. Mackenzie was on his legs, and was pathetically lamenting the hard condition of the Estates, at once commanded by the guns of a fortress and menaced by a fanatical rabble, when he was interrupted by some sentinels who came running from the posts near the Cas- tle. They had seen Dundee at the head of fifty horse on the Stirling road. That road ran close under the huge rock on which the citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ram- parts, and had made a sign that he had something to say. Dun- dee had climbed high enough to hear and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the assem- bly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in the faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliament- ary deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamil- ton himself, who, by the acknowledgment of his opponents, had hitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest and fiercest man in the hall. " It is high time," he cried, " that we should look to ourselves. The enemies of our religion and of our civil freedom are mus- tering all around us ; and we may well suspect that they have accomplices even here. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table. Let nobody go out but those lords and gentlemen whom we shall appoint to call the citizens to arms. There are some good men from the West in Edinburgh, men for whom I can answer." The assembly raised a general cry of assent. Several members of the majority boasted that they too had VOL. III. 17 258 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. brought with them trusty retainers who would turn out at a moment's notice against Claverhouse and his dragoons. All that Hamilton proposed was instantly done. The Jacobites, silent and unresisting, became prisoners. Leven went forth and ordered the drums to beat. The Covenanters of Lanark- shire and Ayrshire promptly obeyed the signal. The force thus assembled had indeed no very military appearance, but was amply sufficient to overawe the adherents of the House of Stuart. From Dundee nothing was to be hoped or feared. He had already scrambled down the Castle hill, rejoined his troopers, and galloped westward. Hamilton now ordered the doors to be opened. The suspected members were at liberty to depart. Humbled and brokenspirited, yet glad that they had come off so well, they stole forth through the crowd of stern fanatics which filled the High Street. All thought of secession was at an end.* On the following day it was resolved that the kingdom should be put into a posture of defence. The preamble of this resolution contained a severe reflection on the perfidy of the traitor who, within a few hours after he had, by an engage- ment subscribed with his own hand, bound himself not to quit his post in the Convention, had set the example of desertion and given the signal of civil war. All Protestants, from sixteen to sixty, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to as- semble in arms at the first summons ; and, that none might pretend ignorance, it was directed that the edict should be pro- claimed at all the market crosses throughout the realm. t The Estates then proceeded to send a letter of thanks to William. To this letter were attached the signatures of many noblemen and gentlemen who were in the interest of the ban- ished King. The Bishops however unanimously refused to subscribe their names. It had long been the custom of the Parliaments of Scotland to entrust the preparation of Acts to a select number of mem- Balcarras's Memoirs ; MS. in the Library of the Faculty of Advocates. t Act. Parl. Scot., March 19, 1G88-0 ; History of the late Revolution in Scot- land, 1690. WILLIAM AXD MART. 259 bers tvho were designated as the Lords of Articles. In con- formity with this usage, the business of framing a plan for the settling of the government was now confided to a Committee of twenty-four. Of the twenty-four eight were peers, eight repre- sentatives of counties, and- eight representatives of towns. The majority of the Committee were Whigs ; and not a single pre- late had a seat. The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of dis- asters, was, about this time, for a moment revived by the arrival of the Duke of Queersberry frcm London. His rank was high : his influence was great : his character, by comparison with the characters of those who surrounded him, was fair. When Popery was in the ascendent, lie had been true to the cause of the Protestant Church ; and, since Whiggism had been in the ascendent, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. Some thought that, if he had been earlier in his place he might have been able to render important service to the House of Stuart.* Even now the stimulants which he applied to his torpid and feeble party produced some faint symptoms of returning animation. Means were found of communicating with Gordon ; and he was earnestly solicited to fire on the city. The Jacobites hoped that, as soon as the cannon balls had beaten down a few chimneys, the Estates would adjourn to Glasgow. Time would thus be gained ; and the royalists might be able to execute their old project of meeting in a separate convention. Gordon however positively refused to take on himself so grave a responsibility on no better warrant than the request of a small cabal. f By this time the Estates had a guard on which they could rely more firmly than on the undisciplined and turbulent Cov- enanters of the West. A squadron of English men of war from the Thames had arrived in the Frith of Forth. On board were the three Scottish regiments which had accompanied William from Holland. He had, with great judgment, selected them to protect the assembly which was to settle the govern- ment of their country ; and, that no cause of jealousy might be * Balcarras. t Ibid. 260 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. given to a people exquisitely sensitive on points of national honour, he had purged the ranks of all Dutch soldiers, and had thus reduced the number of men to about eleven hundred. This little force was commanded by Hugh Mackay, a Highlander of noble descent, who had long served on the Continent, and who was distinguished by courage of the truest temper, and by a piety such as is seldom found in soldiers of fortune. The Convention passed a resolution appointing Mackay general of their forces. When the question was put on this resolution, the Archbishop of Glasgow, unwilling doubtless to be a party to such an usurpation of powers which belonged to the King alone, begged that the prelates might be excused from voting. Divines, he said, had nothing to do with military arrangements. " The Fathers of the Church," answered a member very keenly, " have been lately favoured with a new light. I have myself seen military orders signed by the Most Reverend person who has suddenly become so scrupulous. There was indeed one dif- ference : those orders were for dragooning Protestants ; and the resolution before us is meant to protect us from Papists."* The arrival of Mackay's troops, and the determination of Gordon to remain inactive, quelled the spirit of the Jacobites. They had indeed one chance left. They might possibly, by joining with those Whigs who were -bent on an union with England, have postponed during a considerable time the settle- ment of the government. A negotiation was actually opened with this view, but was speedily broken off. For it soon ap- peared that the party which was for James was really hostile to the union, and that the party which was for the union was really hostile to James. As these two parties had no object in common, the only effect of a coalition between them must have been that one of them would have become the tool of the other. The question of the union therefore was not raised, f Some Jacobites retired to their country seats : others, though they remained at Edinburgh, ceased to show themselves in the Parliament House : many passed over to the winning side ; and, when at * Act. Parl. Scot. ; History of the late Revolution, 1G90 ; Memoirs of North Britain, 1715. t Balcarras. WILLIAM AND MARY. 261 length the resolutions prepared by the Twenty Four were sub- mitted to the Convention, it appeared that the great body which on the first day of the session had rallied round Athol had dwindled away to nothing. The resolutions had been framed, as far as possible, in con- formity with the example recently set at Westminster. In one important point, however, it was absolutely necessary that the copy should deviate from the original. The Estates of England had brought two charges against James, his misgovernment and his flight, and had, by using the soft word " Abdication," evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision, the question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. That question the Es- tates of Scotland could not evade. They could not pretend that James had deserted his post. For he had never, since he came to the throne, resided in Scotland. During many years that kingdom had been ruled by sovereigns who dwelt in another land. The whole machinery of the administration had been constructed on the supposition that the king would be absent, and was therefore not necessarily deranged by that flight which had, in the south of the island, dissolved all government, and suspended the ordinary course of justice. It was only by letter that the King could, when he was at Whitehall, communicate with the Council and the Parliament at Edinburgh ; and by letter he could communicate with them when he was at Saint Germains or at Dublin. The Twenty Four were therefore forced to propose to the Estates a resolution distinctly declaring that James the Seventh had by his misconduct forfeited the crown. Many writers have inferred from the language of this resolution that sound political principles had made a greater progress in Scotland than in Englaud. But the whole history of the two countries from the Restoration to the Union proves this inference to be erroneous. The Scottish Estates used plain language, simply because it was impossible for them, situated as they were, to use evasive language. The person who bore the chief part in framing the resolu- tion, and in defending it, was Sir John Dalrymple, who had recently held the high office of Lord Advocate, and had been 262 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. an accomplice in some of the misdeeds which he now arraigned with great force of reasoning and eloquence. He was strenu- ously supported by Sir James Montgomery, member for Ayr- shire, a man of considerable abilities, but of loose principles, turbulent temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevo- lence. The Archbishop of Glasgow and Sir George Mackenzie spoke on the other side : but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of the advantage of being able to allege that the Estates were under duress, and that liberty of speech had been denied to the defenders of hereditary mon- archy. When the question was put, Athol, Queensberry, and some of their friends withdrew. Only five members voted against the resolution which pronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of his subjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should be settled as the Crown of England had been settled, Athol and Queensberry reappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they could justifiably declare the throne vacant. But, since it had been declared vacant, they felt no doubt that William and Mary were the persons who ought to fill it. The Convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Several great nobles, attended by the Lord Provost of the capital and by the heralds, ascended the octagon tower from which rose the city cross surmounted by the unicorn of Scotland.* Hamilton read the vote of the Convention ; and a King at Arms proclaimed the new Sovereigns with sound of trumpet. On the same day the Estates issued an order that the parochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from their pulpits the proclamation which had just been read at the city cross, and should pray for King William and Queen Mary. Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns had been proclaimed, they had not yet been put * Every reader will remember the malediction which Sir Walter Scott, in the Fifth Canto of Marmion, pronounced on the dunces who removed this interest- ing monument. WILLIAM AND MART. 263 into possession of the royal authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh, as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which settled the govern- ment should clearly define and solemnly assert those privileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. A Claim of Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted by the Convention. To this claim, which purport- ed to be merely declaratory of the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing a list of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One most important article which we should naturally expect to find at the head of such a list, the Convention with great practical prudence, but in defi- ance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in the Claim of Right. Nobody could deny that prelacy was established by Act of Parliament. The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious, unscriptural, antichristian : but il- legal it certainly was not ; and to pronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense. The Whig leaders however were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to prove themselves consummate publicists and logicians. If they made the aboli- tion of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William was to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner open to much criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselves with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at some future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find that their resolution, though un- objectionable in form, was barren of consequences. They knew that William by'no means sympathised with their dislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for the Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the Anglican Church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declare himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that Church. If he should become King of Scotland without being fettered by any pledge on this subject, it might well be apprehended that he would hesitate about pass- ing un Act which would be regarded with abhorrence by a large body of his subjects in the south of the island. It was 264 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. therefore most desirable that the question should be settled while the throne was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, who had no dislike to rochets and mitres, but who wished that William might have a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish people, so these men reasoned, hated episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave William any voice in the mat- ter was to put him under the necessity of deeply wounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations which he governed. It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, which he could not settle in any manner without incurring a fearful amount of obloquy, should be settled for him by others who were exposed to no such danger. He was not yet Sover- eign of Scotland. While the interregnum lasted, the supreme power belonged to the Estates ; and for what the Estates might do the prelatists of his southern kingdom could not hold him responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to this effect ; and there can be little doubt that he expressed the sentiments of his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots could have been reconciled to a modified episcopacy. But, since that could not be, it was manifestly de- sirable that they should themselves, while there was yet no King over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of the institution which they abhorred.* The Convention, therefore, with little debate as it should seem, inserted in the Claim of Right a clause declaring that pre- lacy was an insupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to the body of the people, and that it ought to be abolished. Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonishes an Eng- lishman more than the manner in which the Estates dealt with the practice of torture. In England torture had always been il- legal. In the most servile times the judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who had occasionally resorted to it had, as far as was possible, used it in secret, had never pre- * " It will be neither secuir nor kynd to the King to expect it be (by) Act of Parliament after the setlement, which will lay it at hifl door." Dalrymple to Melville, 5 April, 1689 ; Leveu and Melville Papers. WILLIAM AND MAUY. 2G5 tended that they had acted in conformity with either statute law or common law, and had excused themselves by saying that the extraordinary peril to which the state was exposed had forced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employing ex- traordinary means of defence. It had therefore never been thought necessary by any English Parliament to pass any Act or resolution touching this matter. The torture was not men- tioned in the Petition of Right, or in any of the statutes framed by the Long Parliament. No member of the Convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that the instrument which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throne should contain a declaration against the using of racks and thumbscrews for the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such a dec- laration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather than strengthening a rule which, as far back as the days of the Plantagenets, had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of Westminster Hall to be a distinguishing feature of the English jurisprudence.* In the Scottish Claim of Right, the use of torture without evidence, or in ordinary cases, was de- clared to be contrary to law. The use of torture, therefore, where there was strong evidence, and where the crime was extraordi- nary, was, by the plainest implication, declared to be according to law ; nor did the Estates mention the use of torture among the grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth, they could not condemn the use of torture without condemning themselves. It had chanced that while they were employed in settling the government, the eloquent and learned Lord Presi- dent Lockhart had been foully murdered in a public street through which he was returning from church on a Sunday. The murderer was seized, and proved to be a wretch who, having treated his wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled by a decree of the Court of Session to provide for her. A savage hatred of the Judges by whom she had been protected had taken possession of his mind, and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. It was natural that an assassination attended by so many circumstances of aggravation * There is a striking passage on this subject in Fortescue. 266 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. should move the indignation of the members of the Convention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of the conjuncture and the importance of their own mission. They unfortunately, in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strike the prisoner in the boots, and named a Committee to superintend the operation. But for this unhappy event, it is probable that the law of Scotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated to the law of England.* Having settled the Claim of Right, the Convention proceeded to revise the Coronation oath. When this had been done, three members were appointed to carry the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle, though not, in strictness of law, a Peer, was chosen to represent the Peers : Sir James Montgomery rep- resented the Commissioners of Shires, and Sir John Dalrymple the Commissioners of Towns. The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote which empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary for the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum. The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary pageants by some highly interesting circumstances. On the eleventh of May the three Commissioners came to the Coun- cil Chamber at Whitehall, and thence, attended by almost all the Scotchmen of note who were then in London, proceeded to the Banqueting House. There William and Mary appeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English nobles and statesmen stood round the throne: but the sword of state was committed to a Scotch Lord ; and the oath of office was admin- istered after the Scotch fashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair, holding up their hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to the last clause. There Wil- liam paused. That clause contained a promise that he would root out all heretics and all enemies of the true worship of God ; and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many Scotchmen, not only all Roman Catholics, but all Protestant Episcopalians, * Act. Parl. Scot., April 1, 1G89 ; Orders of Committee of Estates, May 16, 1689; London Gazette, April 11. WILLIAM AND MART. 267 all Independents, Baptists, and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay all British Presbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the Solemn League and Covenant, were enemies of the true wor- ship of God.* The King had apprised the Commissioners that he could not take this part of the oath without a distinct and public explanation ; and they had been authorised by the Con- vention to give such an explanation as would satisfy him. " I will not," he now said, ''lay myself under any obligation to be a persecutor." " Neither the words of this oath," said one of the Commissioners, " nor the laws of Scotland, lay any such obligation on Your Majesty." " In that sense, then, I swear," said William ; " and I desire you all, my lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so." Even his detractors have generally admitted that on this great occasion he acted with uprightness, dignity, and wisdom.f As King of Scotland, he soon found himself embarrassed at every step by all the difficulties which had embarrassed him as King of England, and by other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In the north of the island, no class was more dissatisfied with the Revolution than the class which owed most to the Revolution. The manner in which the Con- * As it has lately been denied that the extreme Presbyterians entertained an unfavourable opinion of the Lutherans, I will give two decisive proofs of the truth of what I have asserted in the text. In the book entitled Faithful Con- tendings Displayed is a report of what passed at the General Meeting of the United Societies of Covenanters on the 24th of October 1688. The question was propounded whether there should be an association with the* Dutch. " It was concluded unanimously," says the Clerk of the Societies, " that we could not have an association with the Dutch in one body, nor come formally under their conduct, being such a promiscuous conjunction of reformed Lutheran malignants and sectaries, to join with whom were repugnant to the testimony of the Church of Scotland." In the Protestation and Testimony drawn up on the 2d of Octo- ber 1707, the United Societies complain that the crown has been settled on " the Prince of Hanover, who has been bred and brought up in the Lutheran religion, which is not only different from, but even in manv things contrary unto that purity in doctrine, reformation, and relitrion, we in these nations had attained unto, as is very well known." They add : " The admitting such a person to reign over us is not only contrary to our Solemn League and Covenant, but to the very "Word of God Itself, Dent, xvii." t History of the late revolution in Scotland ; London Gazette, May 16, 1689. The official account of what passed was evidently drawn up with great care. See also the Royal Diary, 1702. The writer of this work professes to have derived his information from a divine who was. present. 268 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. vention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity had not been more offensive to the Bishops themselves than to those fiery Covenanters who had long, in defiance of sword and car- bine, boot and gibbet, worshipped their Maker after their own fashion in caverns and on mountain tops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a halting between two opinions, such a compromise between the Lord and Baal ? The Estates ought to have said that episcopacy was an abomination in God's sight, and that, in obedience to his word, and from fear of his righteous judgment, they were determined to deal with this great national sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers who of old cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemosh and Astarte. Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not by pious Jo- siahs, but by careless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, not because it was an insult to heaven, but be- cause it was felt as a burden on earth ; not because it was hate- ful to the great Head of the Church, but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the test of right and wrong in religion ? Was not the order which Christ had estab- lished in his own house to be held equally sacred in all countries and through all ages ? And was there no reason for following that order in Scotland, except a reason which might be urged with equal force for maintaining Prelacy in England, Popery in Spain, and Mahometanism in Turkey ? Why, too, was noth- ing said of those Covenants which the -nation had so generally subscribed and so generally violated ? Why was it not distinctly affirmed that the promises set down in those rolls were still bind- ing, and would to the end of time be binding, on the kingdom ? Were these truths to be suppressed from regard for the feelings and interests of a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the idolatrous Spaniard and of the Lutheran Dane, a presby- terian at the Hague and a prelatist at Whitehall ? He, like Jehu in ancient times, had doubtless so far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous House of Ahab. But he, like Jehu, had not taken heed to walk in the divine law with his whole heart, but had tolerated and practised impieties differing only in degree from those of which he had declared himself the enemy. MTILLIAM AND MART. 269 It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate with him on the sin which he was committing by conforming to the Anglican ritual, and by maintaining the Anglican Church gov- ernment, than to flatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that they were as deeply tainted with Eras- tiauism as himself. Many of those who held this language re- fused to do any act which could be construed into a recognition of the new Sovereigns, and would rather have been fired upon by files of musketeers, or tied to stakes within low water mark, than have uttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary. Yet the King had less to fear from the pertinacious adher- ence of these men to their absurd principles than from the ambition and avarice of another set of men who had no princi- ples at all. It was necessary that he should immediately name ministers to conduct the government of Scotland ; and, name whom he might, he could not fail to disappoint and irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least wealthy countries in Europe ; yet no country in Europe contained a greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the placehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had been preeminent, and that whoever might be passed by, he ought to be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were however a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. Hamilton was declared Lord High Commissioner, iu the hope that immense pecuniary allowances, a residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignity little less than regal, would content him. The Earl of Crawford was appointed President of the Parlia- ment ; and it was supposed that this appointment would con- ciliate the rigid Presbyterians : for Crawford was what they called a professor. His letters and speeches are, to use his own phraseology, exceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the prominent politicians of that time, he retained the style which had been fashionable in the preceding generation. He 270 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Lad a text from the Pentateuch or the Prophets ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches with allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah, and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and of the school in which he had been trained, that, in all the mass of his writing which has come clown to us, there is not a single word indicating that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own time some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by the rich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently pronounced him a saint. To those whose habit is to judge of a man rather by his actions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish, cruel, politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose zeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire to obtain a grant of Episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness, it ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and that before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a suit of clothes.* The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dairy mple, was appointed Lord Advocate. His father, Sir James, the greatest of Scottish jurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir William Lockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerable ability, became Solicitor General. Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should * See Crawford's Lettars and Speeches, passim. His style of begging for a place was peculiar. After owning, not without reason, that his heart was deceit- ful and desperately wicked, he proceeded thus : " The same Omnipotent Being who hath said, when the poor and needy seek water and there is none, and their tongue faileth for thirst, he will not forsake them, notwithstanding of my pres- ent low condition, can build me a house if He think fit." Letter to Melville, of May 28, 1089. As to Crawford's poverty and his passion for Bishops' lands, see his letter to Melville of the 4th of December 1690. As to his humanity, see his letter to Melville, Dec. 11, 1690. All these letters are among the Leven and Melville Papers. The author of An Account of the Late Establishment of Pres- byterian Government says of a person who had taken a bribe of ten or twelve pounds, " Had he been as poor as my Lord Crawford, perhaps he had been the more excusable." See also the dedication of the celebrated tract entitled Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed. "WILLIAM AXD MART. 271 he the chief minister. lie had distinguished himself highly in the Convention. He had been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown and administered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary ability and eloquence he had no superior among his countrymen, except the new Lord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in real power, the highest office in the Scottish government ; and this office was the reward to which Montgomery thought himself entitled. But the Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as a man of extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief of the Covenanters : he had been prosecuted at one time for holding conventicles, and at another time for harbour- ing rebels : he had been fined : he had been imprisoned : he had been almost driven to take refuge from his enemies beyond the Atlantic in the infant settlement of New Jersey. It was apprehended that, if he were now armed with the whole power of the Crown he would exact a terrible retribution for what he had suffered.* William therefore preferred Melville, who, though not a man of eminent talents, was regarded by the Pres- byterians as a thoroughgoing friend, and yet not regarded by the Episcopalians as an implacable enemy. Melville fixed his residence at the English Court, and became the regular organ of communication between Kensington and the authorities at Edinburgh. "William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved and possessed" more influence than any of the ostensible minis- ters. This was Carstairs, one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great scholastic attainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faith and ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and suppleness of a consummate politician. In courage and fidelity he resembled Burnet ; but he had, what Burnet wanted, judgment, selfcommand, and a sin- gular power of keeping secrets. There was no post to which he might not have aspired if he had been a layman, or a priest * Burnet, ii. 23, 21 ; Fountainhall Papers, 13 Aug. 1G84, 14 and 15 Oct. 1684, 3 May 1G85 ; Montgomery to Melville, June i!3, 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers ; Pretences of the French Invasion Examined, licensed May 25, 1602. 272 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of the Church of Erigland. But a Presbyterian clergyman could not hope to attain any high dignity either in the north or in the south of the island. Carstairs was forced to content himself with the substance of power, and to leave the semblance to other. He was named Chaplain to Their Majesties for Scotland : but wherever the King was, in England, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, there was this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He obtained from the royal bounty a modest competence ; and he desired no more. But it was well known that he could be as useful a friend and as formidable an enemy as any member of the cabinet ; and he was designated at the public offices and in the antechambers of the palace by the sig- nificant nickname of the Cardinal.* To Montgomery was offered the place of Lord Justice Clerk. But that place, though high and honourable, he thought below his merits and his capacity ; and he returned from London to Scotland with a heart ulcerated by hatred of his ungrateful master and of his successful rivals. At Edin- burgh a knot of "Whigs, as severely disappointed as himself by the new arrangements, readily submitted to the guidance of so bold and able a leader. Under his direction these men, among whom the Earl of Annandale and Lord Ross were the most conspicuous, formed themselves into a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at a tavern to concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathered a great body of greedy and angry politicians. f With these dishonest malecon- tents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to get places, were leagued other malecon tents, who, in the course of a long resistance to tyranny, had become so perverse and irritable that they were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and most constitutional rule. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He had returned from exile, as liti- * See the life and correspondence of Carstairs, and the interesting memorials of him in the Caldwell Papers, printed in 1854. See also Mackay's character of him, and Swift's note. Swift's word is not to be taken against a Scotchman and ti Presbyterian. I believe, however, that Carstairs, though an honest and pious man in essentials, had his full share of the wisdom of the serpent. t Sit John Dalrymple to Lord Melville, June 18, 20, 25, 1689 ; Leven and Mel- ville Papers. WILLIAM AND MARY. 273 gions, as impracticable, as morbidly jealous of all superior au- thority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had been four years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominal Sovereign of William as he had formerly been bent on making a merely nominal general of Argyle.* A man far superior morally and intellectually to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party. Though not a member of the Convention, he was a most active member of the Club.f He hated monarchy ; he hated democracy : his favourite project was to make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, if there must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The lowest class of the people were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive, was to be in the hands of the Parlia- ment. In other words, the country was to be absolutely governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the most needy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under such a polity there could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade, industry, science, would have languished ; and Scotland would have been a smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and an enslaved people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and with honest but wrongheaded republi- cans, were mingled politicians whose course was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who were conscious that they had, in the evil time, done what deserved punishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful and vin- dictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for their servility to James by their opposition to William.^ The great body of Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of the House of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope that the confusion would end in the restora- tion of the banished king. * There is an amusing description of Sir Patrick in the Hyndford MS. written about 1704, and printed among the Carstairs Papers. " He is a lover of tt speeches, and can hardly give audience to private friends without them-" t " No man, though not a member, busier than Saltoun " Lockhart to Mel- ville, July 11, 1689 ; Leven and Melville Papers. See Fletcher's own works, and the descriptions of him in Lockhart's and Mackay's Memoirs. J Dilrymple says, in a letter of the 5th of June, "All the malignants. for fear, are come into the Club ; and they all rote alike." & Balcarras. VOL. III. 18 274 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. While Montgomery was labouring to form out of various materials a party which might, when the Convention should reassemble be powerful enough to dictate to the throne, an enemy still more formidable than Montgomery had set up the standard of civil war in a region about which the politicians of Westminster, and indeed most of the politicians of Edinburgh, knew no more than about Abyssinia or Japan. It is not easy for a modern Englishman, who can pass in a day from his club in Saint James's Street to his shooting box among the Grampians, and who finds in his shooting box all the comforts and luxuries of his club, to believe that, in the time of his greatgrandfathers, Saint James's Street had as little connec- tion with the Grampians as with the Andes. Yet so it was. In the south of our island scarcely any thing was known about the Celtic part of Scotland ; and what was known excited no feel- ing but contempt and loathing. The crags and the glens, the woods and the waters, were indeed the same that now swarm every autumn with admiring gazers and sketchers. The Trosachs wound as now between gigantic walls of rock tapestried with broom and wild roses : Foyers came headlong down through the birch wood with the same leap and the same roar with which he still rushes to Loch Ness ; and, in defiance of the sun of June, the snowy scalp of Ben Cruachan rose, as it still rises, over the willowy islets of Loch Awe. Yet none of these sights had power, till a recent period, to attract a single poet or painter from more opulent and more tranquil regions. Indeed law and police, trade and industry, have done far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit, to develope in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature. A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered or starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints of the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the abruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of falling two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boil- ing waves of a torrent which suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life ; by the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which marauders have just strip- WILLIAM AND MARY. 275 ped and mangled ; or by the screams of those eagles whose next meal may probably be on his own eyes. About the year 1730, Captain Burt, one of the first Englishmen who caught a glimpse of the spots which now allure tourists from every part of the civilised world, wrote an account of his wanderings. He was evidently a man of a quick, an observant and a cultivated mind, and would doubtless, had he lived in our age, have looked with mingled awe and delight on the mountains of Invernessshire. But, writing with the feeling which was universal in his own age, he pronounced those mountains monstrous excrescences. Their deformity, he said, was such that the most sterile plains seemed lovely by comparison. Fine weather, he complained, only made bad worse ; for, the clearer the day, the more dis- agreeably did those misshapen masses of gloomy brown and dirty purple affect the eye. What a contrast, he exclaimed, between these horrible prospects and the beauties of Richmond Hill !* Some persons may think that Burt was a man of vulgar and prosaical mind : but they will scarcely venture to pass a sim- ilar judgment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was one of the very Saxons who, more than a century ago, ventured to ex- plore the Highlands. He was disgusted by the hideous wil- derness, and declared that he greatly preferred the charming country round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant meadow, and the villas with their statues and grottoes, trim flower beds, and rectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe that the author of the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was natur- ally inferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of clerks and milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrine and Loch Lomond.f His feelings may easily be ex- * Captain Burt's Letters from Scotland. t "Shall I tire you with a description of (his unfruitful country, where I must lead you over their hills all brown with heath, or their valleys scarce able to fend a rabbit? . . . Every part of the country presents the same dismal land- scape. No grove or brook lend their music to cheer the stranger." Goldsmith to Bryan ton, Edinburgh, Sept. 26, 1753. In a letter written soon after from Ley- den to the Reverend Thomas Contarine, Goldsmith says, " I was wholly taken up in observing the face of the country. Nothing can equal its beauty. Wherever I turned my eye, tine houses, elegant gardens, statues, grottos, vistas presented themselves. Scotland and this country bear the highest contract : there, hills and rocks intercept every prospect ; here it ia all a continued plain.'* See Ap- 276 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. plained. It was not till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of robbers, till there was as little danger of being slain or plundered in the wildest defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as in Cornhill, that strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by the rainbows which over- hung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain tops. The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders re- garded the Highland scenery was closely connected with a change not less remarkable in the feeling with which they re- garded the Highland race. It is not strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should, in the seventeenth century, have been considered by the Saxons as mere savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they should not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separated from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were printed describing the laws, the super- stitions, the cabins, the repasts, the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots, Mohawks and Ma- lays. The plays and poems of that age are full of allusions to the usages of the Black men of Africa and of the red men O of America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any information was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution, an indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. Pie boasted that, in the course of his pendix C. to the First Volume of Mr. Forster's Life of Goldsmith. I will cite the testimony of another man of genius in support of the doctrine propounded in the text. No human heing has ever had a finer sense of the beauties of naiure than Gray. No prospect surpasses in grandeur and loveliness the first view of Italy from Mount Cenis. Had Gray enjoyed that view from the magnificent road con- structed iu this century, he would undoubtedly have heen in raptures. But in his time the descent was performed with extreme inconvenience and with not a little peril. He therefore, instead of breaking forth into ejaculations of admira- tion ar.J delight, says most unpoeticaily, " Mount Cenis, I confess, carries the permission mountains have of being frightful rather too far ; and its horrors were accompanied with too much danger to give one time to reflect upou their beauties." Gray to West, Nov. 1C, 1739. WILLIAM AND MARY. 277 rambles from lake to lake, and from brook to brook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But when we ex- amine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from the people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing about the Gaelic population. Few Eng- lishmen, he says, had ever seen Inverary. All beyond Inver- arv was chaos.* In the reign of George the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact account of Scotland ; and in this work, consisting of more than three hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient for the Highlands and the Highlanders. f We may well doubt whether, in 1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of less than five hun- dred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in each of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kept a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded treaties. While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders, he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good and the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that the people had no love for their country or for their king ; that they had no attachment to any commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any magistrate superior to the chief. He would have found that life was governed by a code of morality and honour widely different from that which is established in peaceful and pros- perous societies. He would have learned that a stab in the * Northern Memoirs, by R. Franck Philanthropus, 1694. The author had caught a few glimp.-es of Highland scenery, and speaks of it much as Burt spoke in the following genera, ion ; " It is a part of the creation left undressed ; rub- bish thrown aside when the magnificent fabric of the world was created ; as void of form as the natives are indigent of morals and good manners." t Journey through Scotland, by the author of the Journey through England, 1723. 278 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. back, or fi phot from behind a fragment of rock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would have heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreaked on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would have found that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, but honourable. He would have seen, wher- ever he turned, that dislike of steady industry, and that disposi- tion to throw on the weaker sex the heaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages. He would have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking in the sun, angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their aged mothers, their pregnant wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the scanty harvest of oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In their view it was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the aristocratic title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the eagle's feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting, hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in connection with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult. Agriculture was indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was much more becomingly employed in plundering the land of others than in tilling his own. The religion of the greater part of the High- lands was a rude mixture of Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was associated with heathen sacrifices and incan- tations. Baptised men poured libations of ale to one Daemon, and set out drink offerings of milk for another. Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides, and awaited, in that vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal the future. Even among those minstrels and genealogists whose hereditary vocation was to preserve the memory of past events, an enquirer would have found very few who could read. In truth, he might easily have journeyed from sea to sea without discovering a page of Gaelic printed or written. The price which he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the country would have been heavy. He vould have had to endure hardships as great as if he had sojourn- ed among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here and there, WILLIAM AND MART. 279 indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in the Parliament and Privy Council, and who was accustomed to pass a large part of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigs and embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, French dishes and French wines. But, in general, the traveller would have been forced to content himself with very different quarters. In many dwellings the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair and skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His lodging would some- times have been in a hut of which every nook would have swarmed with vermin. lie would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with peat smoke, and. foul with a hundred noisome exhala- tions. At supper grain fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would Lave been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be ; and from that couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the reek of turf, and half mad with the itch.* ' This is not an attractive picture. And yet an enlightened and dispassionate observer would have found in the character and manners of this rude people something which might well excite admiration and a good hope. Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all the four quarters of the globe have since proved it to be. Their intense attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though politically a great evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment was misdirected and ill regulated ; but still it was heroic. There must be some O elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is a member and the leader whom he follows with a love stronger * Almost all these circumstances are taken from Burt's Letters. For the tar, I am indebted to Cleland's poetry. In his verses on the "Highland Host " he Bays : " The reason is. they're mered vith tar, 'Which do'h ''c'enrt their head and neck, Just as it doth their sheep protect." 280 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. than the love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about shedding the blood of an enemy ; but it was not less true that he had high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality to guests. It was true that his preda- tory habits were most pernicious to the commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities, live by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland farmers up the pass which led to his native glen, he no more considered himself as a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes con- sidered themselves as thieves when they divided the cargoes of Spanish galleons. He was a warrior seizing lawful prize of war, of war never once intermitted during the thirty-five gener- ations which had passed away since the Teutonic invaders had driven the children of the soil to the mountains. That, if he was caught robbing on such principles, he should, for the pro- tection of peaceful industry, be punished with the utmost rigour of the law was perfectly just. But it was not just to class him morally with the pickpockets who infested Drury Lane Theatre, or the highwayman who stopped coaches on Blackheath. His inordinate pride of birth and his contempt for labour and trade were indeed great weaknesses, and had done far more than the inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil to keep his country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some com- pensation. It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patri- cian virtues were not less widely diffused among the population of the Highlands than the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the island where men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves to such a degree in the idle saun- tering habits of an aristocracy, so there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of manner, self- respect, and that noble sensibility which makes dishonour more terrible than death. A gentleman of Sky or Lochaber, whose clothes were begrimed with the accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smelt worse than an English hogstye, would often do the honours of that hovel with a lofty courtesy worthy of the WILLIAM AND MARY. 281 splendid circle of Versailles. Though he had as little book- learning as the most stupid ploughboys of England, it would have been a great error to put him in the same intellectual rank with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading that men can become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts of poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute per- fection, and may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in which books are wholly or almost wholly unknown. The first great painter of life and manners has described with a vivacity which makes it impossible to doubt that he was copy- ing from nature, the effect produced by eloquence and song on audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It is probable that, in the Highland councils, men who would 'not have been qualified for the duty of parish clerk sometimes argued questions of peace and war, of tribute and homage, with ability worthy of Halifax and Caermartheu, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who did not know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapso- dies in which a discerning critic might have found passages such as would have reminded him of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden. There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the belief that no natural inferiority had kept the Celt far behind the Saxon. It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient police should make it impossible for the High- lander to avenge his wrongs by violence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his faculties should be developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion and of the English language, if ever he should transfer to his country and to her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with which he had been taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince, the kingdom would obtain an immense accession of strength for all the purposes both of peace and of war. Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well in- formed and impartial judge. But no such judge was then to be found. The Saxons who dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. The Saxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. National enmities have always 282 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. been fiercest among borderers; and the enmity between the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along the whole frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constant injuries. One day many square miles of pasture land were swept bare by armed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangled in a row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held on the debatable land for the necessary interchange of commodities. But to those fairs both parties came prepared for battle ; and the day often ended in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to his Saxon neighbours ; and from his Saxon neighbours those Saxons who dwelt far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his habits. When the English con- descended to think of him at all, and it was seldom that they did so, they considered him as a filthy abject savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and a thief.* This contemptuous loathing lasted till the year 1745, and * A striking illustration of the opinion which was entertained of the High- lander by his Lowland neighbours, ami which was by them communicated to the English, will he found in a volume of Miscellanies published by Afra Behn in 1685- One of the most curious pieces in the collection is a coarse and profane Scotch poem entitled, " How the first Hielandman was made." How and of what materials he was made I shall not venture to relate. The dialogue which immediately follows his creation may be quoted, I hope, without much offence. 1 Says God to the Hielandman. ; Quhair wilt thou now ' 'I will down to the Lowlands. Lord, and there steal a cow. 1 ' Ffy,' quod St. Peter, 'thou wilt never do weel, ' An thou, but new made, so eone gaisto steal.' ' TJmff,' quod the Hielandman, and swore by yon kirk, ' So long as I may geir get to steal, will I nevir work." An eminent Lowland Scot, the brave Colonel Cleland, about the same time, des- cribed the Highlander in the same manner : " For a misobliging word She'll dirk her neighbour o'er the board. If any nsk her of her drift. Forsooth, hernainself lives by theft." Much to the same effect are the very few words which Francis Philanthrop'us (1694) spares to the Highlanders: "They live like lairds and die like loons, hating to work and no credit to borrow : they make depredations and rob their neighbours." In the History of the Revolution in Scotland, printed at Edin- burgh in 1690, is the following passage : " The Highlanders of Scotland are a sort of wretches that have no other consideration of honour, friendship, obedience, or government, than as, by any alternation of affairs or revolution in the gov- ernment, they can improve to themselves an opportunity of robbing or plunder- ins their bordering neighbours," WILLIAM AND MARY. 283 was then for a moment succeeded by intense fear and rage. England, thoroughly alarmed, put forth her whole strength. The Highlands were subjugated rapidly, completely, and for ever. During a short time the English nation, still heated by the recent conflict, breathed nothing but vengeance. The slaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficient to slake the public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamed the populace of London with hatred, which showed itself by unmanly outrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolution took place through the whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs was destroyed : the people were disarmed : the use of the old national garb was interdicted : the old' predatory habits were effectually broken ; and scarcely had this change been accomplished when a strange reflux of public feeling began. Pity succeeded to aversion. The nation execrated the cruelties which had been committed on the Highlanders, and forgot that for those cru- elties it was itself answerable. Those very Londoners, who, while the memory of the march to Derby was still fresh, had thronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on the prince who had put down the rebellion the nickname of Butcher. Those barbarous institutions and usages, which, while they were in full force, no Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentioned except with con- tempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they became objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the chiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to draw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and the indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of law, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, had more than once brought on the empire the curse of civil war. As they had formerly seen only the odious side of that polity, they could now see only the pleasing side. The old tie, they said, had been parental : the new tie was purely commercial. What could be more lament- able tha:i th:it the head of a tribe should eject, for a paltry 284 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. arrear of rent, tenants who were his own flesh and blood, tenants whose forefathers had often with their bodies covered his forefathers on the field of battle? As long as there were Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon popu- lation as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn, the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent. Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most graceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the Gaelic superstition-s, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment at which the pecu- liarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So strong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men of sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of a very different order from the impostor who fabri cated these forgeries saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the old Highland life. What- ever was repulsive was softened down : whatever was graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of these works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical plays of Shakespeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poet were realities to his readers. The places which he described became holy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon the vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were r- WILLIAM AND MARY. 285 garded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at no remote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizen of Edinburgh or Glasgow what an In- dian hunter in his war paint is to an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have represented Washington brandishing a tomahawk, and girt with a string of scalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was not easy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyrood thought that he could not give a more striking proof of his respect for the usages which had prevailed in Scotland before the Union, than by disguising himself in what, before the Union, was considered by nine Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief. Thus it has chanced that the old Gaelic institutions and man- ners have never been exhibited in the simple light of truth. Up to the middle of the last century, they were seen through one false medium : they have since been seen through another. Once they loomed dimly through an obscuring and distorting haze of prejudice ; and no sooner had that fog dispersed than they ap- peared bright with all the richest tints of poetry. The time when a perfectly fair picture could have been painted has now passed away. The original has long disappeared : no authentic effigy exists : and all that is possible is to produce an imperfect like- ness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse caricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery. Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerning the history and character of the Highlanders is one which it is especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young Pretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on British ground in the case of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally as- cribed to those tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, profound reverence for the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. A close enquiry however will show that the 286 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. strength of these feelings among the Celtic clans has been great- ly exaggerated. In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forget that the same names, badges, and warcries had very different meanings in different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how little there was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitism of England. The Jacobitism of the Scotch Highlander was, at least in the seven- teenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the other two. The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines of passive obedience andnonresistance. In fact disobedience and resistance made up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clans which it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyal that they were prepared to standby James to the death, even when he was in the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallest respect to his authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Their practice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy him. Some of them had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime of withstanding his lawful commands, and would have torn to pieces without scruple any of his officers who had dared to venture beyond the passes for the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accused by their opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching the obedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no re- spectable English Whig ever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rare and extreme evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has been the theme of so much warm eulogy were some whose whole existence from boyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident, were not likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appeared to an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they were not, like the aboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination. To such domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. He occupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own national usages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor than the oppressed. He exacted black mail from them : he drove away their ilocka WILLIAM AND MART. 287 and herds ; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his native wilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary region of moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of his hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic, and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves ; nor had his national and religious feelings ever been outraged by the power and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and heretical. The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the population of the Highlands, twice in the seven- teenth century, drew the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which divided the commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth of clans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great commonwealth of European nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the larger, there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territory and pre- cedence, a system of public law, a balance of power. There was one inexhaustible source of discontents and quarrels. The feudal system had, some centuries before, been introduced into the hill country, but had neither destroyed the patriarchal sys- tem nor amalgamated completely with it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was also chief in the Celtic pol- ity ; and, when this was the case, there was no conflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all the willing and loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only what he could get and hold by force. If he was able, by the help of his own tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe, there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, of all forms of tyranny. At different times different races had risen to an authority which had pro- duced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had once pos- sessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country of Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendency similar to that which the House of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the ascendency of the Macdonalds had, like the ascendency of the House of Austria, passed away : and the Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in the Highlands what the 288 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. Bourbons had become in Europe.* The parallel might be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to throw on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt for the obligations of plighted faith, were ascribed, with or without reason, to the dreaded race. " Fair and false like a Campbell," became a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum More had, with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain after mountain and island after island to the original O domains of his House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, some compelled to pay tribute, some incorpor- ated with the conquerors. At length the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell was sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all the other western clans. It was during those civil troubles which commenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached the zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the head of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he used each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other. The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five thousand half heathen mountaineers added to his in- fluence among the austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror which he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland Princes whose history is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It was while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred which fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms. The call was promptly obeyed. A power- ful coalition of clans waged war, nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is not easy for any * Since this passage was written I was much pleased by finding that Lord Fountainhall ued,.in July 1C76, exactly the same illustration which had occurred to me. He says that " Argyle's ambitious grasping at the mastery of the High- lands and Western Islands of Mull, Ha, &c., stirred up other clans to enter into a combination for bearing him downe, like the confederat forces of Gemianie, Spain, Holland, &c., against the growth of the French." WILLIAM AND MARY. 289 person who has studied the history of that contest to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monai-chy, his neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the vic- tory gained at Iverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of the great battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells. The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess of Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, Earl Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the ascendency of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendency could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formed a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior force which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned to death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities : there was great alarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard ; and there was again great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away, when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when those chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from the Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles. While England and Scotland generally were exe- crating the tyranny of James, he was honoured as a deliverer in Apin and Lochaber, in Glenroy and Glenmore.* The hatred excited by the power and ambition of the House of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House had perished, when his children were fugitives, when strangers garrisoned the castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne had been laid waste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible * In the introduction to the Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron is a very sensible remark : " It may appear paradoxical : but the editor cannot help hazarding the conjecture that the motives which prompted the Highlanders to support King James were substantially the same as those by wjrich the promoters of the Revolution were actuated." The whole intrpduption, indeed, well deseryes to be read. VOL. III. 19 290 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. precedent which had been set iu the case of the Macgregors ought to be followed, and that it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell. On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argyle returned in triumph. He was, as his predecessors had been, the head, not only of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived him of his estate and of his hon- ours was treated by the majority of the Convention as a nullity. The doors of the Parliament House were thrown open to him : he was selected from the whole body of Scottish nobles to administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns ; and he was authorized to raise an army on his domains for the service of the Crown. He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of his ancestors. Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demand all the long and heavy arrears of rent and tribute which were due to him from his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries and insults which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitation in the castles of twenty petty kings. The uneasiness was great among the Stewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on one side, and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens were still more alarmed. Once they had been the masters of those beautiful valleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But the Campbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection, and had, generation after generation, looked up with awe and detestation to the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently been promised a complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief would have held his estate immedi- ately from the Crown, had been prepared and was about to pass the seals, when the Revolution suddenly extinguished a hope which amounted almost to certainty.* The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands had been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned by the Campbells. f Even before William and f Skene's Highlanders of Scotland ; Douglas's Baronage of Scotland. * Ses the Memoirs of the Life of Sir Ewaii Cameron, and the Historical and WILLIAM AND MARY. 291 Mary had been proclaimed at Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had crossed the sea to Dub- lin, and had assured James that, if two or three battalions from Ireland landed in Argyleshire, they would be immediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores.* A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron, of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was in per- sonal qualities unrivalled among the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, a terrible enemy. His counten- ance and bearing were singularly noble. Some persons who had been at Versailles, and among them the shrewd and obser- vant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, a most striking resemblance between Lewis the Four- teenth and Lochiel ; and whoever compares the portraits of the two will perceive that there really was some likeness. In stat- ure the difference was great. Lewis, in spite of highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middle size. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In agility and skill at his weapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He had repeatedly been victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of great fame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which, down to his time, preyed on the red deer of the Gram- pians ; and by his hand perished the last of the ferocious breed which is known to have wandered at large in our island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by intellectual than by bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educated and travelled Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby at Westminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had Genealogical Account of the Clan Maclean, by a Senacliie. Though this last work was published so late as 1838, the writer seems to have bseii inflamed by animosity as tierce as that with which the Macleans of the seventeenth centuiy regarded the Campbells. In the short compass of one page the Marquis of Argyle is designated as " the diabolical Scotch Cromwell," " the vile vindictive persecutor," " the base traitor," and " the Argyle impostor." In another page he is " the insidious Campbell, fertile in villany," " the avaricious slave," " the coward of Argyle," and " the Scotch traitor." In the next page he is " the base and vindictive enemy of the House of Maclean," "the hypocritical Covenanter," " the incorrigible traitor," " the cowardly and malignant enemy." It is a happy thing that passions so violent can now vent themselves only in scolding. * Letter of Avaux to Louvois, April 6-16, 1689, enclosing a paper entitled Meinoire du Chevalier Macklean. 292 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. learned something about the sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about the fine arts in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochiel had very little knowledge of books, he was eminently wise in council, eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful in managing the minds of men. His understanding preserved him from those follies into which pride and anger frequently hurried his brother chieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as mere barbarians, mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in Saint James's Square he was spoken of as a man of such capacity and courage that it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literature, he ranks with the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purse allowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the Lau- reateship, Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had been plundered by marauders, and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode, three cows, and the almost in- credible sum of fifteen pounds sterling. In truth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand five hundred years before his birth, and depicted, such is the power .of genius, in colours which will be fresh as many years after his death. He was the Ulysses of the Highlands.* He held a large territory peopled by a race which rever- enced no lord, no king but himself. For that territory, how- ever, he owed homage to the House of Argyle ; and he was deeply in debt to his feudal superiors for rent. This vassalage he had doubtless been early taught to consider as degrading and unjust. In his minority he had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had been educated at the Castle of * See the singularly interesting Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron of Lochiel, printed at Edinburgh for the Abbotsford Club in 1842. The MS. must have been at least a century older. See also in the same volume the account of Sir Ewan'a death, copied from the Balhadie papers. I ought to say that the author of the Memoirs of Sir Ewan, though evidently well informed about the affairs of the Highlands and the characters of the most distinguished chiefs, was grossly igno- rant of English politics and history. I will quote what Van Citters wrote to the States General about Lochiel, '' 2(i> 1G89 : " Sir Evan Cameron, Lord Locheale, Dec. G. een man. sooik hoor van die hem lange gekent en dagelyk hebben mede omge- gaan, van so groot verstant, courage, en beleyt, als wyuiges syns gelycke syn." WILLIAM AND MART. 293 Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loose from the au- thority of his guardian, and fought bravely both for Charles the First and for Charles the Second. lie was therefore con- sidered by the English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after the Restoration, and was knighted by the hand of James. The compliment, however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the English Court, would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. " Take care of your pockets, my lords," cried His Majesty ; " here comes the king of the thieves." The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial ; but it was very unlike what was called loyalty in England. In the records of the Scottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the Second, described as a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in high contempt of the royal authority.* On one occasion the Sheriff of Invernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court in Lochaber. Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchal despotism, came to the tribunal at the head of four hundred armed Camerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but he dropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pages and armourbearers who watched every turn of his eye. " Is none of my lads so clever as to send this judge packing ? I have seen them get up a quarrel when there was less need of one." In a moment a brawl began in the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out : cries of " Help " aud " Murder " were raised on all sides : many wounds were inflicted : two men were killed : the sitting broke up in tumult; and the terrified Sheriff was forced to put himself under the protection of the chief, who, with a plausible show of respect and concern, escorted him safe home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this feat is constantly ex- tolled as the most faithful and dutiful of subjects by writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimate authority of Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughed the doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any chief in Invernessshire had gained more than he by the Act. Parl., July 5, 1661. 294 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. downfall of the House of Argyle, or had more reason than he to dread the restoration of that House. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more alarmed and disgusted by the proceedings of the Convention. But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortune with painful apprehension the fiercest and the most pow- erful were the Macdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread name laid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of those Lords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth century, disputed the preeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy, which has lasted down to our own time, caused much bickering among the competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour of their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old feud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of royalty, lona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion, the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Since the downfall of the House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had not regained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that they had now no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in the West, they had turned their arms against weaker enemies in the East, against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness. The clan of Mackintosh, a branch of an ancient and renown- ed tribe which took its name and badge from the wild cat of the forests, had a dispute with the Macdonalds, which originated, if tradition may be believed, in those dark times when the Danish pirates wasted the coasts of Scotland. Inverness was a Saxon colony among the Celts, a hive of traders and artisans, in the midst of a population of loungers and plunderers, a solitary out- post of civilisation in a region of barbarians. Though the buildings covered but a small part of the space over which they now extend ; though the arrival of a brig in the port was a rare WILLIAM AND MARY. 295 event ; though the Exchange was the middle of a mhy street, in which stood a market cross much resembling a broken milestone ; though the sittings of the municipal council were held in a filthy den with a rough-cast wall ; though the best houses were such as would now be called hovels ; though the best roofs were of thatch : though the best ceilings were of bare rafters ; though the best windows were, in bad weather, closed with shutters for want of glass ; though the humbler dwellings were mere heaps of turf, in which barrels with the bottoms knocked out served the pur- pose of chimneys ; yet to the mountaineer of the Grampians this city was as Babylon or as Tyre. Nowhere else had he seen four or five hundred houses, two churches, twelve maltkilns, crowded close together. Nowhere else had he been dazzled by the splendour of rows of booths, where knives, horn spoons, tin kettles, and gaudy ribands were exposed to sale. Nowhere else had he been on board of one of those huge ships which brought sugar and wine over the sea from countries far beyond the limits of his geography.* It is not strange that the haughty and war- like Macdonalds, despising peaceful industry, yet envying the fruits of that industry, should have fastened a succession of quarrels on the people of Inverness. In the reign of Charles the Second, it had been apprehended that the town would be stormed and plundered by those rude neighbours. The terms of peace which they offered showed how little they regarded the authority of the prince and of the law. Their demand was that a heavy tribute should be paid to them, that the municipal magistrates should bind themselves by an oath to deliver up to the vengeance of the clan every burgher who should shed the blood of a Macdonald, and that every burgher who should any- where meet a person wearing the Macdonald tartan should ground arms in token of submission. Never did Lewis the Fourteenth, not even when he was encamped between Utrecht * See Burt's Third and Fourth Letters. In the early editions is an engraving of the market cross of Inverness, and of that part of the street where the mer- chants congregated. I ought here to acknowledge my obligations to Mr. Robert Carruthers, who kindly furnished me with much curious information about Inverness, and with Borne extracts from the municipal records. 206 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. and Amsterdam, treat the States General with such despotic in- solence.* By the intervention of the Privy Council of Scot- land, a compromise was effected : but the old animosity was un- diminished. Common enmities and common apprehensions produced a good understanding between the town and the clan of Mackintosh. The foe most hated and dreaded by both was Colin Macdonald of Keppoch, an excellent specimen of the genuine Highland Jacobite. Keppoch's whole life had been passed in insulting and resisting the authority of the Crown. He had been repeat- edly charged on his allegiance to desist from his lawless prac- tices, but had treated every admonition with contempt. The government, however, was not willing to resort to extremities against him ; and he long continued to rule undisturbed the stormy peaks of Coryarrick, and the gigantic terraces which still mark the limits of what was once the Lake of Glenroy. He was famed for his knowledge of all the ravines and caverns of that dreary region ; and such was the skill with which he could track a herd of cattle to the most secret hidingplace that he was known by the nickname of Coll of the Cows.f At length his outragous violations of all law compelled the Privy Council to take decided steps. He was proclaimed a rebel : letters of fire and sword were issued against him under the seal of James ; and a few weeks before the Revolution, a body of royal troops, supported by the whole strength of the Mackintoshes, marched into Keppoch's territories. Keppoch gave battle to the invaders, arid was victorious. The King's forces were put to flight ; the King's captain was slain ; and this by a hero whose loyalty to the King many writers have very complacently contrasted with the factious turbulence of the "Whigs, t If Keppoch had ever stood in any awe of the government, he was completely relieved from the feeling by the general anarchy which followed the revolution. He wasted the lands of the Mackintoshes, advanced to Inverness, and threatened the * I am indebted to Mr. Carruthers for a copy of the demands of the Macdon- aids, and of the answer of the Town Council. t Colt's Deposition, Appendix to the Act. Tail, of July 14, 1C90. t See the Life of Sir Ewan Cameron. WILLIAM AXD MART. 297 town with destruction. The danger was extreme. The houses were surrounded only by a wall which time and weather had so loosened that it shook in every storm. Yet the inhabitants showed a bold front ; and their courage was stimulated by their preachers. Sunday the twenty-eighth of April was a day of alarm and confusion. The savages went round and round the small colony of Saxons like a troop of famished wolves round a sheepfold. Keppoch threatened and blustered. He would come in with all his men. He would sack the place. The burghers meanwhile mustered in arms round the market cross to listen to the oratory of their ministers. The day closed with- out an assault : the Monday and the Tuesday passed away in intense anxiety ; and then an unexpected mediator made his appearance. Dundee after his flight from Edinburgh, had retired to his country seat in that valley through which the Glamis descends to the ancient castle of Macbeth. Here he remained quiet during some time. He protested that he had no intention of opposing the new government. He declared himself ready to return to Edinburgh, if only he could be assured that he should be protected against lawless violence ; and he offered to give his word of honour, or, if that were not sufficient to give bail, that he would keep the peace. Some of his old soldiers had accompanied him, and formed a garrison sufficient, to protect his house against the Presbyterians of the neighbourhood. Here he might possibly have remained unharmed and harmless, had not an event for which he was not answerable made his enemies imptacable, and made him desperate.* An emissary of James had crossed from Ireland to Scotland with letters addressed to Dundee and Balcarras. Suspicion was excited. The messenger was arrested, interrogated, and searched ; and the letters were found. Some of them proved to be from Melfort and were worthy of him. Every line indicated those qualities which had made him the abhorrence of his coun- try, and the favourite of his master. He announced with delight the near approach of the day of vengeance and rapine, of the * Balcarras's Memoirs ; History of the late Revolution in Scotland. 298 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. day when the estates of the seditious would be divided among the loyal, and when many who had been great and prosperous would be exiles and beggars. The king, Melfort said, was determined to be severe. Experience had at length convinced His Majesty that mercy would be weakness. Even the Jacobites were dis- gusted by learning that a restoration would be immediately followed by a confiscation and a proscription. Some of them pretended to suspect a forgery. Others did not hesitate to say that Melfort was a villain, that he wished to ruin Dundee and Balcarras, and that, for that end, he had written these odious despatches, and had employed a messenger who had very dex- terously managed to be caught. It is however quite certain that Melfort never disavowed these papers, and that, after they were published, he continued to stand as high as ever in the favour of James. It can therefore hardly be doubted that in those passages which shocked even the zealous supporters of hereditary right, the Secretary merely expressed with fidelity the feelings and intentions of his master.* Hamilton, by virtue of the powers which the Estates had, before their adjournment, confided to him, ordered Balcarras and Dundee to be arrested. Balcarras was taken, and was confined, first in his own house, and then in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh. But to seize Dundee was not so easy an enterprise. As soon as he heard that war- rants were out against him, he crossed the Dee with his follow- ers, and remained a short time in the wild domains of the House of Gordon. There he held some -communication with the Mac- donalds and Camerons about a rising. But he seems at this time to have known little and cared little about the Highlanders. For their national character he probably felt the dislike of a Saxon, for their military character the contempt of a professional soldier. He soon returned to the Lowlands, and stayed there till he learned that a considerable body of troops had been sent * There is among the Nairne Papers in the Bodleian Library a curious MS. entitled ' Journal de ce qui s'est passe enlrlande depuis I'arrive'e de Sa Majeste." In this journal there are notes and corrections in English and French ; th English in the handwriting of James, the French in the handwriting of Melfort. The letters intercepted by f lamilton are mentioned, and mentioned in a way which plainly shows that they were genuine ; nor is there the least sign that James dis- approved of them. WILLIAM AND MART. 299 to apprehend him.* He then betook himself to the hill country as his last refuge, pushed northward through Strathdon and Strathbogie, crossed the Spey, and on the morning of the first of May, arrived with a small baud of horsemen, at the camp of Keppoch before Inverness. The new situation in which Dundee was now placed, the new view of society which was presented to him, naturally sug- gested new projects to his inventive and enterprising spirit. The hundreds of athletic Celts 'whom he saw in their national order of battle were evidently not allies to be despised. If he could form a great coalition of clans, if he could muster under one banner ten or twelve thousand of those hardy warriors, if he could induce them to submit to the restraints of discipline, what a career might be before him ! A commission from King James, even when King James was securely seated on the throne, had never been regarded with much respect by Coll of the Cows. That chief, however, hated the Campbells with all the hatred of a Macdonald, and promptly gave in his adhesion to the cause of the House of Stuart. Dundee undertook to settle the dispute between Kep- poch and Inverness. The town agreed to pay two thousand dollars, a sum which, small as it might be in the estimation of the goldsmiths of Lombard Street, probably 'exceeded any treas- ure that had ever been carried into the wilds of Coryarrick. Half the sum was raised, not without difficulty, by the inhabi- tants ; and Dundee is said to have passed his word for the re- mainder.t He next tried to reconcile the Macdonalds with the Mack- intoshes, and flattered himself that the two warlike tribe?, lately arrayed against each other, might be willing to fight side by r,ide under his command. But he soon found that it was no light * " Nor did ever." says Bslcarras, addressing James, " the Viscount of Dun- dee think of going to the Highlands without further orders from you, till a party was sent to apprehend him." f See the narrative sent to James in Ireland ard received by him July 7, 1G80. It is arrsong the Nairne Pf.pers. See also the Memoirs of Dundee, 171 i ; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron ; Balcarras's Memoirs ; Mae!c?,y's Hemoi"S. These narra- tives do not perfectly agree with each other, or with the information which I obtained from Inverness. 500 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. matter to take up a Highland feud. About the rights of the contending Kings neither clan knew anything nor cared anything. The conduct of both is to be ascribed to local passions and in- terests. What Argyle was to Keppoch, Keppoch was to the Mackintoshes. The Mackintoshes therefore remained neutral ; and their example was followed by the Macphersons, another branch of the race of the wild cat. This was not Dundee's only disappointment. The Mackenzies, the Frasers, the Grants, the Munros, the Mackays, the Macleods, dwelt at a great distance from the territory of Mac Callum More. They had no dispute with him ; they owed no debt to him ; and they had no reason to dread the increase of his power. They therefore did not sympathise with his alarmed and exasperated neighbours, and could not be induced to join the confederacy against him.* Those chiefs, on the other hand, who lived nearer to Inverary, and to whom the name of Campbell had long been terrible and hateful, greeted Dundee eagerly, and promised to meet him at the head of their followers on the eighteenth of May. During the fortnight which preceded that day, he traversed Badenoch and Athol, and exhorted the inhabitants of those districts to rise in arms. He dashed into the Lowlands with his horsemen, surprised Perth, and carried off some Whig gentlemen prisoners to the mountains. Meanwhile the fiery crosses had been wandering from hamlet to hamlet over all the heaths and mountains thirty miles round Ben Nevis ; and when he reached the trysting place in Lochaber he found that the gathering had begun. The head quarters were fixed close to Lochiel's house, a large pile built entirely of fir wood, and considered in the Highlands as a superb palace. Lochiel, surrounded by more than six hundred broadswords, was there to receive his guests. Macnaghten of Macnaghten and Stewart of Appin were at the muster with their little clans. Macdonald of Keppoch led the warriors who had, a few months before, under his command, put to flight the musketeers of King James. Macdonald of Clanronald was of tender years : but he was brought to the camp by his uncle, who acted as Regent * Memoirs of Dundee ; Tarbet to Melville, 1st June 1689, in the Leven and Melville Papers. WILLIAM AND MARY. 301 during the minority. The youth was attended by a picked body guard composed of his own cousins, all comely in appearance, and good men of their hands. Macdonald of Glengarry, con- spicuous by his dark brow and his lofty stature, came from that great valley where a chain of lakes, then unknown to fame, and scarcely set down in maps, is now the daily highway of steam vessels passing and repassing between the Atlantic and the German Ocean. None of the rulers of the mountains had a higher sense of his personal dignity, or was more frequently engaged in disputes with other chiefs. He generally affected in his manners and in his housekeeping a rudeness beyond that of his rude neighbours, and professed to regard the very few luxuries which had then found their way from the civilised parts of the world into the Highlands as signs of the effeminacy and degeneracy of the Gaelic race. But on this occasion he chose to imitate the splendour of Saxon warriors, and rode on horse- back before his four hundred plaided clansmen in a steel cuirass and a coat embroidered with gold lace. Another Macdonald, destined to a lamentable and horrible end, led a band of hardy freebooters from the dreary pass of Glencoe. Somewhat later came the great Hebridean potentates. Macdonald of Sleat, the most opulent and powerful of all the grandees who laid claim to the lofty title of Lord of the Isles, arrived at the head of seven hundred fighting men from Sky. A fleet of long boats brought five hundred Macleans from Mull under the command O of their chief, Sir John of Duart. A far more formidable array had in old times followed his forefathers to battle. But the power, though not the spirit, of the clan had been broken by the arts and arms of the Campbells. Another band of Macleans arrived under a valiant leader, who took his title from Lochbuy, which is, being interpreted, the Yellow Lake.* * Narrative in the Nairne Papers ; Depositions of Colt, Osburne, Malcolm, and Stewart of Ballacban in the Appendix to the Act Parl. of July 14, 1690 ; Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. A few touches I have taken from an English translation of some passages in a lost epic poem written in Latin, and called the Grameis. The writer was a zealous Jacobite named Phillipps. I have seldom made use of the Memoirs of Dundee, printed in 1714, and never without eome misgiving. The writer was certainly not, as he pretends, one of Dundee's offi- cers,- but a stupid and ignorant Grub Street garreteer. He is utterly wrong both 302 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. It does not appear that a single chief who had not some special cause to dread arid detest the House of Argyle obeyed Dundee's summons. There is indeed strong reason to believe that the chiefs who came would have remained quietly at home if the government had understood the politics of the Highlands. Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able and ex- perienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncture pointed out to Melville by letter, and to Mackay in conversa- tion, both the cause and the remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotland the calamities of civil war. There was, Tarbet said, no general disposition to insurrection among the Gael. Little was to be apprehended even from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of being sub- jected to the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that the ablest and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled them- selves not at all about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and the Tories. Lochiel in particular, whose eminent personal qualities made him the most important man among the mountaineers, cared no more for James than for William. If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Mac- leaus could be convinced that, under the new government, their estates and their dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum More would make some concessions, if Their Majesties would take on themselves the payment of some arrears of rent, Dundee might call the clans to arms : but he would call to little purpose. Five thousand pounds, Tarbet thought, would be sufficient to quiet all the Celtic magnates ; and in truth, though that sum might seem ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster, though it was not larger than the annual gains of the Groom of the Stole, or of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well be thought immense by a barbarous potentate who, while he ruled hundreds of square miles, and could bring hundreds of warriors as to the place and as to the time of the most important of all the events which he relates, the battle of Killiecraiikie. He says that it was fought on the banks of the Tummell, and on the 13th of June. It was fought on the banks of the Garry, and on the 27th of July. After giving such a specimen of inaccuracy as this, it would be idle to point out minor blunders. WILLIAM AND MART. 303 into the field, had perhaps never had fifty guineas at once in his coffers.* Though Tarbet was considered by the Scottish ministers of the new Sovereigns as a very doubtful friend, his advice was not altogether neglected. It was resolved that overtures such as he recommended should be made to the maleconteuts. Much depended on the choice of an agent; and unfortunately the choice showed how little the prejudices of the wild tribes of the hills were understood at Edinburgh. A Campbell was selected for the office of gaining over to the cause of King William men whose only quarrel to King William was that he countenanced the Campbells. Offers made through such a channel were naturally regarded as at once snares and insults. After this it was to no purpose that Tarbet wrote to Lochiel and Mackay to Glengarry. Lochiel returned no answer to Tarbet ; and Glengarry returned to Mackay a coldly civil answer, in which the general was advised to imitate the example of Monk.f Mackay, meanwhile, wasted some weeks in marching, in countermarching and in indecisive skirmishing. He afterwards honestly admitted that the knowledge which he had acquired, during thirty years of military service on the Continent, was, in the new situation in wUich he was placed, useless to him. It was difficult in such a country to track the enemy. It was im- possible to drive him to bay. Food for an invading army was not to be found in the wilderness of heath and shingle ; nor could supplies for many days be transported far over quaking bogs and up precipitous ascents. The general found that he had tired his men and their horses almost to death, and yet had effected nothing. Highland auxiliaries might have been of the greatest use to him : but he had few such auxiliaries. The chief of the Grants, indeed, who had been persecuted by the late government, and had been accused of conspiring with the unfor- tunate Earl of Argyle, was zealous on the side of the Revolution. * From a letter of Archibald Earl of Argyle to Lauderdale, which bears date the 25th of June 16C4, it appears that a hundred thousand marks Scots, little more than five thousand pounds sterling, would, at that time, have very nearly satisfied all the claims of Mac Callum More 0:1 his neighbours. t Mackay's Memoirs ; Tarbet to Melville, June 1, 16t<9, in the Leven and Melville Papers ; Dundee to Melfoit, June 27, in the Nairne Papers. 304 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Two hundred Mackays, animated probably by family feeling, came, from the northern extremity of our island, where at mid- summer there is no night, to fight under a commander of their own name : but in general the clans which took no part in the insurrection awaited the event with cold indifference, and pleased themselves with the hope that they should easily make their peace with the conquerors, and be permitted to assist in plundering the conquered. An experience of little more than a month satisfied Mackay that there was only one way in which the Highlands could be subdued. It was idle to run after the mountaineers up and down their mountains. A chain of fortresses must be built in the most important situations, and must be well garrisoned. The place with which the general proposed to begin was Inverlochy, where the huge remains of an ancient castle stood and still stand. This post was close to an arm of the sea, and was in the heart of the country occupied by the discontented clans. A strong force stationed there, and supported, if necessary, by ships of war, would effectually overawe at once the Macdonalds, the Camerons and the Macleans.* While Mackay was representing in his letters to the council at Edinburgh the necessity of adopting* this plan, Dundee was contending with difficulties which all his energy and dexterity could not completely overcome. The Highlanders, while they continued to be a nation living under a peculiar polity were in one sense better and in another sense worse fitted for military purposes than any other nation in Europe. The individual Celt was morally and physically well qualified for war, and especially for war in so wild and rugged a country as his own. Pie was intrepid, strong, fleet, patient of cold, of hunger, and of fatigue. Up steep crags, and over treacherous morasses, he moved as easily as the French household troops paced along the great road from Versailles to Marli. He was accustomed to the use of weapons and to the sight of blood : he was a fencer : he was a marksman ; and before he t had ever stood in the ranks, he was already more than half a soldier. * See Maekay's Memoirs, and his letter to Hamilton of tlie 14tli of June 1689. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 305 As the individual Celt was easily turned into a soldier, so a tribe of Celts was easily turned into a battalion of soldiers. All that was necessary was that the military organisation should be conformed to the patriarchal organisation. The Chief must be Colonel : his uncle or his brother must be Major : the tacksmen, who formed what may be called the peerage of the little community, must be the Captains ; the company of each Captain must consist of those peasants who lived on his land, and whose names, faces, connections, and characters were per- fectly known to him : the subaltern officers must be selected anong the Duiuhe Wassels, proud of the eagle's feather : the henchman was an excellent orderly : the hereditary piper and his sons formed the band ; and the clan became at once a regi- ment. In such a regiment was found from the first moment that exact order and prompt obedience in which the strength of regular armies consists. Every man, from the highest to the lowest, was in his proper place, and knew that place perfectly. It was not necessary to impress by threats or by punishment on the newly enlisted troops the duty of regarding as their head him whom they had regarded as their head ever since they could remember anything. Every private had, from infancy, respected his corporal much and his Captain more, and had al most adored his Colonel. There was therefore no danger of mutiny. There was as little danger of desertion. Indeed the very feelings which most powerfully impel other soldiers to desert kept the Highlander to his standard. If he left it whither was he to go ? All his kinsmen, all his friends, were arrayed round it To separate himself from it was to separate himself for ever from his family, and to incur all the misery of that very homesickness which, in regular armies, drives so many recruits to abscond at the risk of stripes and of death. When these things are fairly considered, it will not be thought strange that the Highland clans should have occasionally achieved great martial exploits. But those very institutions which made a tribe of High- landers, all bearing the same name, and all subject to the same ruler, so formidable in battle, disqualified the nation for war on VOL. III. 20 306 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. a large scale. Nothing was easier than to turn clans into efficient regiments ; but nothing was more difficult than to com- bine these regiments in such a manner as to form an efficient army. From the shepherds and herdsmen who fought in the ranks up to the chiefs, all was harmony and order. Every man looked up to his immediate superior ; and all looked up to the common head. But with the chief this chain of subordina- tion ended. He knew only how to govern, and had never learned to obey. Even to royal proclamations, even to Acts of Parliament, he was accustomed to yield obedience only when they were in perfect accordance with his own inclinations. It was not to be expected that he would pay to any delegated authority a respect which he was in the habit of refusing to the supreme authority. He thought himself entitled to judge of the propriety of every order which he received. "Of his brother chiefs, some were his enemies, and some his rivals. It was hardly possible to keep him from affronting them, or to con- vince him that they were not affronting him. All his followers sympathised with all his animosities, considered his honour as their own, and were ready at his whistle to array themselves round him in arms against the commander in chief. There was there- fore very little chance that by any contrivance any five clans could be induced to cooperate heartily with one another during a long campaign. The best chance, however, was when they were led by a Saxon. It is remarkable that none of the great actions performed by the Highlanders during our civil wars was per- formed under the command of a Highlander. Some writers have mentioned it as a proof of the extraordinary genius of Montrose and Dundee that those captains, though not themselves of Gaelic race or speech, should have been able to form and direct confederacies of Gaelic tribes. But in truth it was pre- cisely because Montrose and Dundee were not Highlanders that they were able to lead armies composed of Highland clans. Had Montrose been chief of the Carnerons, the Macdonalds would never have submitted to his authority. Had Dundee been chief of Clanronald, he would never have been obeyed by Glengarry. Haughty and punctilious men, who scarcely ac- WILLIAM AND MARY. 307 knowledged the King to be their superior, would not have en- dured the superiority of a neighbour, an equal, a competitor. They could far more easily bear the preeminence of a distin- guished stranger. Yet even to such a stranger they would allow only a very limited and a very precarious authority. To bring a chief before a court martial, to shoot him, to cashier him, to degrade him, to reprimand him publicly was impossible. Macdonald of Keppoch or Maclean of Duart would have struck dead any officer who had demanded his sword, and told him to consider himself as under arrest ; and hundreds of clay- mores would instantly have been drawn to protect the mur- derer. All that was left to the commander under whom these potentates condescended to serve was to argue with them, to supplicate them, to flatter them, to bribe them ; and it was only during a short time that any human skill could preserve bar- money by these means. For every chief thought himself enti- tled to peculiar observance ; and it was therefore impossible to pay marked court to any one without disobliging the rest. The general found himself merely the president of a congress of petty kings. He was perpetually called upon to hear and to compose disputes about pedigrees, about precedence, about the division of spoil. His decision, be it what it might, must offend somebody. At any moment lie might hear that his right wing had fired on his centre in pursuance of some quarrel two hundred years old, or that a whole battalion had marched back to its native glen, because another battalion had been put in the post of honour. A Highland bard might easily have found in the history of the year 1680 subjects very similar to those with which the war of Troy furnished the great poets of antiquity. One day Achilles is sullen, keeps his tent, and announces his intention to depart with all his men. The next day Ajax is storming about the camp, and threatening to cut the throat of Ulysses. Hence it was that, though the Highlanders achieved some great exploits in the civil wars of the seventeenth century, those exploits left no trace which could be discerned after the lapse of a few weeks. Victories of strange and almost portentous splendour produced all the consequences of defeat. Veteran 308 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. soldiers and statesmen were bewildered by those sudden turns of fortune. It was incredible that undisciplined men should have performed such feats of arms. It was incredible that such feats of arms, having been performed, should be immediately followed by the triumph of the conquered and the submission of the conquerors. Montrose, having passed rapidly from vic- tory to victory, was, in the full career of success, suddenly aban- doned by his followers. Local jealousies and local interests had brought his army together. Local jealousies and local interests dissolved it. The Gordons left him because they fancied that he neglected them for the Macdonalds. The Macdonalds left him because they wanted to plunder the Campbells. The force which had once seemed sufficient to decide the fate of a kingdom melted away in a few days : and the victories of Tippermuir and Kilsyth were followed by the disaster of Philiphaugh- Dundee did not live long enough to experience a similar reverse of fortune ; but there is every reason to believe that, had his life been prolonged one fortnight, his history would have been the history of Montrose retold. Dundee made one attempt, soon after the gathering of the clans in Lochaber, to induce them to submit to the discipline of a regular army. lie called a council of war to consider this sub- ject. His opinion was supported by all the officers who had joined him from the low country. Distinguished among them were James Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, and James Galloway, Lord Dunkeld. The Celtic chiefs took the other side. Loch- iel, the ablest among them, was their spokesman, and argued the point with much ingenuity and natural eloquence. " Our sys- tem," such was the substance of his reasoning, " may not be the best : but we were bred to it from childhood : we under- stand it perfectly : it is suited to our peculiar institutions, feel- ings, and manners. Making war after our own fashion, we have the expertness and coolness of veterans. Making war in any other way, we shall be raw and awkward recruits. To turn us into soldiers like those of Cromwell and Turenne would be the business of years : and we have not even weeks to spare. We have time enough to~ unlearn our own discipline, but not time WILLIAM AXD MART. 309 enough to laarn yours." Dundee, with high compliments to Lochiel, declared himself convinced, and perhaps was convinced : for the reasonings of the wise old chief were by no means with- out weight.* - Yet some Celtic usages of war were such as Dundee could not tolerate. Cruel as he was, his cruelty always had a method and a purpose. He still hoped that he might be able to win some chiefs who remained neutral ; and he carefully avoided every act which could goad them into open hostility. This was undoubtedly a policy likely to promote the interest of James ; but the interest of James was nothing to the wild marauders who used his name and rallied round his banner merely for the purpose of making profitable forays and wreaking old grudges. Keppoch especially, who hated the Mackintoshes much more than he loved the Stuarts, not only plundered the territory of his enemies, but burned whatever he could not carry away. Dundee was moved to great wrath by the sight of the blazing dwellings. " I would rather," he said, " carry a musket in a respectable regiment than be captain of such a gang of thieves." Punishment was of course out of the question. Indeed it may be considered as a remarkable proof of the general's influence that Coll of the Cows deigned to apologise for conduct for which, in a well governed army, he would have been shot.f As the Grants were in arms for King William, their prop- erty was considered as fair prize. Their territory was in- vaded by a party of Camerons : a skirmish took place : some blood was shed ; and many cattle were carried off to Dundee's camp, where provisions were greatly needed. This raid pro- duced a quarrel, the history of which illustrates in the most striking manner the character of a Highland army. Among those who were slain in resisting the Camerons was a Mac- donald of the Glengarry branch, who had long resided among the Grants, had become in feelings and opinions a Grant, and had absented himself from the muster of his tribe. Though he had been guilty of a high offence against the Gaelic code of honour and morality, his kinsmen remembered the sacred tie * Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. t Ibid. 310 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. he had forgotten. Good or bad, he was bone of their bone: he was flesh of their flesh; and he should have been reserved for their justice. The name which he bore, the blood of the Lords of the Isles, should have been his protection. Glengarry in a rage went to Dundee and demanded vengeance on Lochiel and the whole race of Cameron. Dundee replied that the unfortunate gentleman who had fallen was a traitor to the clan as well as to the King. Was it ever heard of in war that the person of an enemy, a combatant in arms, was to be held inviolable on account of his name and descent? And, even if wrong had been done, how was it to be redressed ? Half the army must slaughter the other half before a finger could be laid on Lochiel. Glengarry went away raging like a madman. Since his complaints were disregarded by those who ought to right him, he would right himself : he would draw out his men, and fall sword in hand on the murderers of his cousin. During some time he would listen to no expostulation. When he was reminded that Lochiel's followers were in number nearly double of the Glengarry men, " No matter," he cried, " one Macdonald is worth two Camerons." Had Lochiel been equally irritable and boastful, it is probable that the Highland insurrection would have given little more trouble to the government, and that the rebels would have perished obscurely in the wilderness by one another's claymores. But nature had bestowed on him in large measure the qualities of a statesman, though fortune had hidden those qualities in an obscure corner of the world. He saw that this was not a time for brawling; his own character for courage had long been established ; and his temper was under strict government. The fury of Glengarry, not being in- flamed by any fresh provocation, rapidly abated. Indeed there were some who suspected that he had never been quite so pug- nacious as he had affected to be, and that his bluster was meant only to keep up his own dignity in the eyes of his retainers. However this might be, the quarrel was composed ; and the two chiefs met with the outward show of civility at the general's table.* * Memoirs of SirEwan Cameron. WILLIAM AND MARY. 311 What Dundee saw of his Celtic allies must have made him desirous to have in his army some troops on whose obedience he could depend, and who would not, at a signal from their colonel, turn their arras against their general and their king. He accordingly, during the months of May and June, sent to Dublin a succession of letters earnestly imploring assistance. If six thousand, four thousand, three thousand, regular soldiers were now sent to Lochaber, he trusted that His Majesty would soon hold a court in Holyrood. That such a force might be spared hardly admitted of a doubt. The authority of James was at that time acknowledged in every part of Ireland, except on the shores of Lough Erne and behind the ramparts of London- derry. He had in that kingdom an army of forty thousand men. An eighth part of such an army would scarcely be missed there, and might, united with the clans which were in insurrec- tion, effect great things in Scotland. Dundee received such answers to his applications as en- couraged him to hope that a large and well appointed force would soon be sent from Ulster to join him. He did not wish to try the chance of battle before these succours arrived.* Mac- kay, on the other hand, was weary of marching to and fro in a desert. His men were exhausted and out of heart. He thought O it desirable that they should withdraw from the hill country, and William was of the same opinion. In June therefore the civil war was, as if by concert be- tween the generals, completely suspended. D.undee remained in Lochaber, impatiently awaiting the arrival of troops and sup- plies from Ireland. It was impossible for him to keep his Highlanders together in a state of inactivity. A vast extent of moor and mountain was required to furnish food for so many mouths. The clans therefore went back to their own glens, having promised to reassemble on the first summons. Meanwhile Mackay's soldiers, exhausted by severe exer- tions and privations, were taking their ease in quarters' scat- tered over the low country from Aberdeen to Stirling. Mackay himself was at Edinburgh, and was urging the ministers * Dundeo to Melfort, Jure 27, 1689. 312 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. there to furnish him with the means of constructing a chain of fortifications among the Grampians. The ministers had, it should seem, miscalculated their military resources. It had been expected that the Campbells would take the field in such force as would balance the whole strength of the clans which marched under Dundee. It had also been expected that the Covenanters of the West would hasten to swell the ranks of the army of King William. Both expectations were disappoint- ed. Argyle had found his principality devastated, and his tribe disarmed and disorganised. A considerable time must elapse before his standard would be surrounded by an array such as his forefathers had led to battle. The Covenanters of the West were in general unwilling to enlist. They were assuredly not wanting in courage ; and they hated Dundee with deadly hatred. In their part of the country the memory of his cruelty was still fresh. Every village had its own tale of blood. The greyheaded father was missed in one dwelling, the hopeful stripling in another. It was remembered but too well how the dragoons had stalked into the peasant's cottage, cursing and damning him, themselves, and each other at every second word, pushing from the ingle nook his gi'andmother of eight} 7 , and thrusting their hands into the bosom of his daughter of sixteen ; how the abjuration had been tendered to him ; how he had folded his arms and said " God's will be done " ; how the Colonel had called for a file with loaded muskets ; and how in three minutes the good man of the house had been wallowing in a pool of blood at his own door. The seat of the martyr was still vacant at the fireside ; and every child could point out his grave still green amidst the heath. When the people of this region called their oppressor a servant of the devil, they were not speaking figuratively. They believed that between the bad man and the bad angel there was a close alliance on definite terms; that Dundee had bound himself to do the work of hell on earth, and that, for high purposes, hell was permitted to pro- tect its slave till the measure- of his guilt should be full. But, intensely as these men abhorred Dundee, most of them had a scruple about drawing the sword for William. A great WILLIAM AND MART. 313 meeting was held in the parish church of Douglas : and the question was propounded, whether, at a time when war was in the land, and when an Irish invasion was expected, it were not a duty to take arms. The debate was sharp and tumul- tuous. The orators on one side adjured their brethren not to incur the curse denounced against the inhabitants of Meroz, who came not to the help of the Lord against the mighty. The orators on the other side thundered against sinful asso- ciations. There were malignants in William's army : Mackay's own orthodoxy was problematical : to take military service with such comrades, and under such a general, would be a sin- ful association. At length after much wrangling, and amidst great confusion, a vote was taken ; and the majority pro- nounced that to take military service would be a sinful associa- tion. There was however a large minority ; and, from among the members of this minority, the Earl of Angus was able to raise a body of infantry, which is still, after the lapse of more than a hundred and sixty years, known by the name of the Cameronian Regiment. The first Lieutenant Colonel was Cleland, that implacable avenger of blood who had driven Dundee from th3 Convention. There was no small difficulty in filling the ranks ; for many West country Whigs, who did not think it absolutely sinful to enlist, stood out for terms subversive of all military discipline. Some would not serve under any colonel, major, captain, sergeant, or corporal, who was not ready to sign the Covenant. Others insisted that, if it should be found absolutely necessary to appoint any officer who had taken the tests imposed in the late reign, he should at least qualify himself for command by publicly confessing his sin at the head of the regiment. Most of the enthusiasts who had proposed these conditions were induced by dexterous management to abate much of their demands. Yet the new regiment had a very peculiar character. The soldiers were all rigid Puritans. One of their first acts was to petition the Par- liament that all drunkenness, licentiousness, and profane- ness might be severely punished. Their own conduct must have been exemplary : for the worst crime which the most 314 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. austere bigotry could impute to them was that "of huzzaing on the King's birthday. It was originally intended that with the military organisation of the corps should be interwoven the organisation of a Presbyterian congregation. Each com pany was to furnish an elder ; and the elders were, with the chaplain, to form an ecclesiastical court for the suppression of immorality and heresy. Elders, however, were not ap- pointed : but a noted hill preacher, Alexander Shields, was called to the office of chaplain. It is not easy to conceive that fanaticism can be heated to a higher temperature than that which is indicated by the writings of Shields. According to him, it should seem to be the first duty of a Christian ruler to persecute to tho death every heterodox subject, and the first duty of a Christian subject to poniard a heterodox ruler. Yet there was then in Scotland an enthusiasm compared with which the enthusiasm even of this man was lukewarm. The extreme Covenanters protested against his defection as vehemently as he had protested against the Black Indulgence and the oath of supremacy, and pronounced every man who entered Angus's regiment guilty of a wicked confederacy with malignants.* Meanwhile Edinburgh Castle had fallen, after holding out more than two months. Both the defence and the attack had been languidly conducted. The Duke of Gordon, unwilling to incur the mortal hatred of those at whose mercy his lands and life might soon be, did not choose to batter the city. The as- sailants, on the other hand, carried on their operations with so little energy and so little vigilance that a constant communica- tion was kept up between the Jacobites within the citadel and the Jacobites without. Strange stories were told of the polite and facetious messages which passed between the besieged and * See Faithful Contendings Displayed, particularly the proceedings of April 29 and 30 and of May 13, and 14, 1G89 ; the petition to Parliament drawn up by the regiment, on July 18, 1CS9 ; the protestation of Sir Robert Hamilton of November 6, 1689 ; and the admonitory Epistle to the Regiment, dated March 27, 1690. The Society people, as they called themselves, seem to have been espe- cially shocked by the way in which the King's birthday had been kept. "We nope," they wrote, " ye are against observing anniversary days as well as we, and that ye will r.iowrn for what ye have done." As to the opinions and temper of Alexander Shields, see his Hind Let Loose. WILLIAM AND MART. 315 the besiegers. On one occasion Gordon sent to inform the ma- gistrates that he was going to fire a salute on account of some news which he had received from Ireland, but that the good town need not be alarmed, for that his guns would not be load- ed with ball. Ou another occasion, his drums beat a parley ; the white flag was hung out : a conference took place ; and he gravely informed the enemy that all his cards had been thumbed to pieces, and begged to have a few more packs. His friends established a telegraph by means of which they conversed with him across the lines of sentinels. From a window in the top story of one of the loftiest of those gigantic houses, a few of which still darken the High Street, a white cloth was hung out when all was well, and a black cloth when things went ill. If it was necessary to give more detailed information, a board was held up inscribed with capital letters so large that they could, by the help of a telescope, be read on the ramparts of the castle. Agents laden with letters and fresh provisions managed, in va- rious disguises and by various shifts, to cross the sheet of water which then lay on the north of the fortress and to clamber up the precipitous ascent. The peal of a musket from a particular half moon was the signal which announced to the friends of the House of Stuart that another of their emissaries had got safe tip the rock. But at length the supplies were exhausted ; and it was necessary to capitulate. Favourable terms were readily granted : the garrison marched out ; and the keys were de- livered up amidst the acclamations of a great multitude of burghers.* But the government had far more acrimonious and more pertinacious enemies in the Parliament House than in the Cas- tle. When the Estates reassembled after their adjournment, the crown and sceptre of Scotland were displayed with the won- ted pomp in the hall as types of the absent sovereign. Hamil- ton rode in state from Holy rood up the High Street as Lord High Commissioner ; and Crawford took the chair as President. Two Acts, ono turning the Convention into a Parliament, the * Siege of the Castle of Edinburgh, printed for the Bannatyne Club ; Lond. Gaz. June 10-20, 1669. 316 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. other recognising William and Mary as King and Queen, were rapidly passed and touched with the sceptre ; and then the con- flict of factions began.* It speedily appeared that the opposition which Montgomery had organised was irresistibly strong. Though made up of many conflicting elements, Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists, it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of those mean and timid politi- cians who naturally gravitate towards the stronger party. The friends of the government were few and disunited. Hamilton brought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had always been unstable ; and he was now discontented. He held indeed the highest place to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined that he had only the show of power while others enjoyed the substance, and was not sorry to see those of whom he was jealous thwarted and annoyed. He did not absolutely betray the prince whom he represented : but he sometimes tam- pered with the chiefs of the Club, and sometimes did sly ill turns to those who were joined with him in the service of the Crown. His instructions directed him to give the royal assent to laws for the mitigating or removing of numerous grievances, and particularly to a law restricting the power and reforming the constitution of the Committee of Articles, and to a law establish- ing the Presbyterian Church Government.! But it mattered not what his instructions were. The chiefs of the Club were bent on finding a cause of quarrel. The propositions of the Government touching the Lords of the Articles were contemp- tuously rejected. Hamilton wrote to London for fresh directions; and soon a second plan, which left little more than the name of the once despotic Committee, was sent back. But the second plan, though such as would have contented judicious and tem- perate reformers, shared the fate of the first. Meanwhile the chiefs of the Club laid on the table a law which interdicted the King from ever employing in any public office any person who * Act. Parl. Scot., June 5, June 17, 1689. * The instructions will be found among the Somers Tracts. WILLIAM AND MARY. 317 had ever borne any part in any proceeding inconsistent with the Claim of Rfght, or who had ever obstructed or retarded any good design of the Estates. This law, uniting, within a very short compass, almost all the faults which a law can have, was well known to be aimed at the Lord President of the Court of Ses- sion, and at his son the Lord Advocate. Their prosperity and power made them objects of envy to every disappointed candi- date for office. That they were new men, the first of their race who had risen to distinction, and that nevertheless they had, by the mere force of ability, become as important in the state as the Duke of Hamilton or the Earl of Argyle, was a thought which galled the heSrts of many needy and haughty patricians. To the Whigs of Scotland the Dalrymples were what Halifax and Caermarthen were to the Whigs of England. Neither the exile of Sir James, nor the zeal with which Sir John had promoted the Revolution, was received as an atonement for old delinquency. They had both served the bloody and idolatrous House. They had both oppressed the people of God. Their late repentance might perhaps give them a fair claim to pardon, but surely gave them no rijjht to honours and rewards. O The friends of the government in vain attempted to divert the attention of the Parliament from the business of persecuting the Dalrymple family to the important and pressing question of Church Government. They said that the old system had been abolished ; that no other system had been substituted ; that it was impossible to say what was the established religion of the kingdom ; and that the first duty of the legislature was to put an end to an anarchy which was daily producing disasters and crimes. The leaders of the Club were not to be so drawn away from their object. It was moved and resolved that the considera- tion of ecclesiastical affairs should be postponed till secular affairs had been settled. The unjust and absurd Act of Inca- pacitation was carried by seventy-four voices to twenty-four. Another vote still more obviously aimed at the House of Stair speedily followed. The Parliament laid claim to a Veto on the nomination of the Judges, and assumed the power of stopping the signet, in other words, of suspending the whole administration of 318 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. justice, till this claim should be allowed. It was plain from what passed iii debate, that though the chiefs of the Club had begun with the Court of Session, they did not mean to end there. The arguments used by Sir Patrick Hume and others led directly to the conclusion th.t the King ought not to have the appointment of any great public functionary. Sir Patrick indeed avowed, both in speech and in writing, his opinion that the whole patron- age of the realm ought to be transferred from the Crown to the Estates. When the place of Treasurer, of Chancellor, of Secre- tary, was vacant, the Parliament ought to submit two or three names to His Majesty ; and one of those names His Majesty ought to be bound to select.* All this time the Estates obstinately refused to grant any supply till their Acts should have been touched with the sceptre. The Lord High Commissioner was at length so much provoked by their perverseness that, after long temporising, he refused to touch even Acts which were in themselves unobjectionable, and to which his instructions empowered him to consent. This state of things would have ended in some great convulsion, if the King of Scotland had not been also King of a much greater and more opulent kingdom. Charles the First had never found any par- liament at Westminster more unmanageable than William, dur- ing this session, found the parliament at Edinlmrgh. But it was not in the power of the parliament at Edinburgh to put on William such a pressure as the parliament at Westminster had put on Charles. A refusal of supplies at Westminster was a serious thing, and left the Sovereign no choice except to yield, or to raise money by unconstitutional means. But a refusal of supplies at Edinburgh reduced him to no such dilemma. The largest sum that he could hope to receive from Scotland in a year was less than what he received from England every fort- night. He had therefore only to entrench himself within the limits of,his undoubted prerogative, and there to remain on the defensive, till some favourable conjuncture should arrive/)" * As to Sir Patrick's views, see his letter of the 7th of June, and Lockhart'a letter of the llth of July, in the Leven and Melville Papers. t My chief materials for the history of this session have been the Acts, the Minutes, and the Leven and Melville Papers. WILLIAM AND MARY. 319 "While these things were passing in the Parliament House, the civil war in the Highlands, having been during a few weeks suspended, broke forth again more violently than before. Since the splendour of the House of Argyle had been eclipsed, no Gaelic chief could vie in power with the Marquess of Athol. The district from which he took his title, and of which he might almost be called the sovereign, was in extent larger than an or- dinary county, and was more fertile, more diligently cultivated, and more thickly peopled than the greater part of the Highlands. The men who followed his banner were supposed to be not less numerous than all the Macdonalds and Macleans united, and were, in strength and courage, inferior to no tribe in the moun- tains. But the clan had been made insignificant by the insigni- ficance of the chief. The Marquess was the falsest, the most fickle, the most pusillanimous, of mankind. Already, in the shorj; space of six months, he had been several times a Jacobite, and several times a Williamite. Both Jacobites and Williamites regarded him with contempt and distrust, which respect for his immense power prevented them from fully expressing. After repeatedly vowing fidelity to both parties, and repeatedly betraying both, he began to think that he should best provide for his safety by abdicating the functions both of a peer and of a chieftain, by absenting himself both from the Parliament House at Edinburgh and from his castle in the mountains, and by quitting the country to which he was bound by every tie of duty and honour at the very crisis of her fate. While all Scotland was waiting with impatience and anxiety to see in which army his numerous retainers would be arrayed, he stole away to England, settled himself at Bath, and pretended to drink the waters.* His principality, left with- out a head, was divided against itself. The general leaning of the Athol men was towards King James. For they had been employed by him, only four years before, as the ministers of his vengeance against the House of Argyle. They had garri- * "Athol," says Dundee contemptuously, "is gone to England, who did not know what to do." Dundee to Melfort, June 27, 1689. See Athol's letters to Melville of the 21st of May aiid the 8th of Juiie, in the Leveii and Melville Papers. 320 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. soned Inverary : they had ravaged Lorn : they had demolished houses, cut down fruit trees, burned fishing boats, broken mill- stones, hanged Campbells, and were therefore not likely to be pleased by the prospect of Mac Callum More's restoration. One word from the Marquess would have sent two thousand clay- mores to the Jacobite side. But that word he would not speak ; and the consequence was, that the conduct of his followers was as irresolute and inconsistent as his own. While they- were waiting for some indication of his wishes, they were called to arms at once by two leaders, either of whom might, with some show of reason, claim to be considered as the representative of the absent chief. Lord Murray, the Mar- quess's eldest son, who was married to a daughter of the Duke of Hamilton, declared for King William. Stewart of Ballenach, the Marquess's confidential agent, declared for King James. The people knew not which summons to obey. He whose au- thority would have been held in profound reverence had plighted faith to both sides, and had then run away for fear of being under the necessity of joining either ; nor was it very easy to say whether the place which he had left vacant belonged to his steward or to his heir apparent. The most important military post in Athol was Blair Castle. The house which now bears that name is not distinguished by any striking peculiarity from other country seats of the aristoc- racy. The old building was a lofty tower of rude architecture which commanded a vale watered by the Garry. The walls would have offered very little resistance to a battering train, but were quite strong enough to keep the herdsmen of the Gram- pians in awe. About five miles south of this stronghold, the valley of the Garry contracts itself into the celebrated glen of Killiecrankie. At present a highway as smooth as any road in Middlesex ascends gently from the low country to the summit of the defile. White villas peep from the birch forest ; and, on a fine summer day, there is scarcely a turn of the pass at which may not be seen some angler casting his fly on the foam of the river, some artist sketching a pinnacle of rock, or some party of pleasure banqueting on the turf in the fretwork of shade and WILLIAM AND MARY. 321 sunshine. But, in the days of William the Third, Killiecrankie was mentioned with horror by the peaceful and industrious in- habitants of the Perthshire lowlands. It was deemed the most perilous of all those dark ravines through which the marauders of the hills were wont to sally forth. The sound, so musical to modern ears, of the river brawling round the mossy rocks and among the smooth pebbles, the masses of grey crag and dark verdure worthy of the pencil of Wilson, the fantastic peaks bathed, at sunrise and sun-set, with light rich as that which glows on the canvass of Claude, suggested to our ancestors thoughts of murderous ambuscades, and of bodies stripped, gashed, and abandoned to the birds of prey. The only path was narrow and rugged : a horse could with difficulty be led up : two men could hardly walk abreast ; and, in some places, the way ran so close by the precipice that the traveller had great need of a steady eye and foot. Many years later, the first Duke of Athol constructed a road up which it was just possible to drag his coach. But even that road was so steep and so strait that a handful of resolute men might have defended it against an army ; * nor did any Saxon consider a visit to Killiecrankie as a pleasure, till experience had taught the English Government that the weapons by which the Celtic clans could be most ef- fectually subdued were the pickaxe and the spade. The country which lay just above this pass was now the theatre of a war such as the Highlands had not often witnessed. Men wearing the same tartan, and attached to the same lord O were arrayed against each other. The name of the absent chief was used, with some show of reason, on both sides. Bal- lenach, at the head of a body of vassals who considered him as the representative of the Marquess, occupied Blair Castle. Murray, with twelve hundred followers, appeared before the walls, and demanded to be admitted into the mansion of his family, the mansion which would one day be his own. The garrison re- fused to open the gates. Messengers were sent off by the be- siegers to Edinburgh, and by the besieged to Lochaber.f In both places the tidings produced great agitation. Mackay and * Memoirs of Sir Ewau Cameron. t Mackay's Memoirs. VOL. III. 21 322 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Dundee agreed in thinking that the crisis required prompt and strenuous exertion. On the fate of Blair Castle probably de- pended the fate of all Athol. On the fate of Athol might de- pend the fate of Scotland. Mackay hastened northward, and ordered his troops to assemble in the low country of Perthshire. Some of them were quartered at such a distance that they did not arrive in time. He soon, however, had with him the three Scotch regiments which had served in Holland, and which bore the names of their colonels, Mackay himself, Balfour, and Ram- say. There was also a gallant regiment of infantry from Eng- land, then called Hastings's, but now known as the thirteenth of the line. With these old troops were joined two regiments newly levied in the Lowlands. One of them was commanded by Lord Kenmore ; the other, which had been raised on the Border, and which is still styled the King's Own Borderers, by Lord Leven. Two troops of horse, Lord Annandale's and Lord Belhaven's, probably made up the army to the number of above three thousand men. Belhaven rode at the head of his troop : but Annandale, the most factious of all Montgomery's followers, preferred the Club and the Parliament House to the field.* Dundee, meanwhile, had summoned all the clans which ac- knowledged his commission to assemble for an expedition into Athol. His exertions were strenuously seconded by Lochiel. The fiery crosses were sent again in all haste through Appin and Ardnamurchan, up Glenmore, and along Loch Leven. But the call was so unexpected, and the time allowed was so short, that the muster was not a very full one. The whole number of broadswords seems to have been under three thousand. With this force, such as it was, Dundee set forth. On his march he was joined by succours which had just arrived from Ulster. They consisto^l of little more than three hundred Irish foot, ill armed, ill clothed, and ill disciplined. Their commander was au officer named Cannon, who had seen service in the Netherlands, and who might perhaps have acquitted himself well in a subordi- nate post and in a regular army, but who was altogether un- * Makay's Memoirs. WILLIAM AND MARY. 323 equal to the part now assigned to him.* He had already loi- tered among the Hebrides so long that some ships which had been sent with him, and which were laden with stores, had been taken by English cruisers. He and his soldiers had with dif- ficulty escaped the same fate. Incompetent as he was, he bore a commission which gave him military rank in Scotland next to Dundee. The disappointment was severe. In truth James would have done better to withhold all assistance from the Highlanders than to mock them by sending them, instead of the well appointed army which they had asked and expected, a rabble contemptible in numbers and appearance. It was now evident that whatever was done for his cause in Scotland must be done by Scottish hands, f While Mackay from one side, - and Dundee from the other, were advancing towards Blair Castle, important events had taken place there'. Murray's adherents soon began to waver in their fidelity to him. They had an old antipathy to Whigs ; for they considered the name of Whig as synonymous with the name of Campbell. They saw arrayed against them a large number of their kinsmen, commanded by a gentleman who was supposed to possess the confidence of the Marquess. The be- sieging army therefore melted rapidly away. Many returned home on the plea that, as their neighbourhood was about to be the seat of war, they must place their families and cattle in security. Others more ingenuously declared that they would not fight in such a quarrel. One large body went to a brook, filled their bonnets with water, drank a health to King James, and then dispersed, t Their zeal for King James, however, did not induce them to join the standard of his general. They lurked among the rocks and thickets which overhang the Garry, in the hope that there would soon be a battle, and that, whatever might be the event, there would be fugitives and corpses to plunder. Murray was in a strait. 'His force had dwindled to three * Van O.lyck to the GrefBer of the States General, Aug. 2-13, 1689. t Memoirs of Sir Ewau Cameron. t Bale-array's Memoir*. 324 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. or four hundred men : even in those men he could put little trust ; and the Macdonalds and Camerons were advancing fast. He therefore raised the siege of Blair Castle, and retired with a few followers into the defile of Killiecrankie. There he was soon joined by a detachment of two hundred fusileers whom Mackay had sent forward to secure the pass. The main body of the Lowland army speedily followed.* Early in the morning of Saturday the twenty-seventh of July, Dundee arrived at Blair Castle. There he learned that Mackay's troops were already in the ravine of Killiecrankie. It was necessary to come to a prompt decision. A council of war was held. The Saxon officers were generally against haz- arding a battle. The Celtic chiefs were of a different opinion. Glengarry and Lochiel were now both of a mind. " Fight, my Lord," said Lochiel with his usual energy : " fight immediately, fight, if you have only one to three. Our men are in heart. Their only fear is that the enemy should escape. Give them their way ; and be assured that they will either perish or gain a complete victory. But if you restrain them, if you force them to remain on the defensive, I answer for nothing. If we do not fight, we had better break up and retire to our mountains. "f Dundee's countenance brightened. " You hear, gentlemen," he said to his Lowland officers, " you hear the opinion of one who understands Highland war better than any of us." No voice was raised on the other side. It was determined to fight ; and the confederated clans in high spirits set forward to en- counter the enemy. The enemy meanwhile had made his way up the pass. The ascent had been long and toilsome : for even the foot had to climb by twos and threes ; and the baggage horses, twelve hundred in number, could mount only one at a time. No wheeled carriage had ever been tugged up that arduous path. The head of the column had emerged and was on the table land, while the rearguard was still in the plain below. At length the passage was effected ; and the troops found them- * Mackay's Short Relation, dated Aug. 17, UkS. t Memoirs of Sir Kwau (Jaiuertm. WILLIAM AND MART. 325 selves in a valley of no great extent. Their right was flanked by a rising ground, their left by the Garry. Wearied with their morning's work, they threw themselves on the grass to take some rest and refreshment. Early in the afternoon they were roused by an alarm that the Highlanders were approaching. Regiment after regiment started up and got into order. In a little while the summit of an ascent which was about a musket shot before them was cov- ered with bonnets and plaids. Dundee rode forward for the purpose of surveying the force with which he was to contend, and then drew up his own men with as much skill as their peculiar character permitted him to exert. It was desirable to keep the clans distinct. Each tribe, large or small, formed a column separated from the next column by a wide interval. One of these battalions might contain seven hundred men, while another consisted of only a hundred and twenty. Lochiel had represented that it was impossible to mix different tribes without destroying all that constituted the peculiar strength of a Highland army.* On the right, close to the Garry, were the Macleans. Near- est to them were Cannon and his Irish foot. Next stood the Macdonalds of Clanronald, commanded by the guardian of their young prince. On their left were other bands of Macdonalds. At the head of one large battalion towered the stately form of Glengarry, who bore in his hands the royal standard of King James the Seventh.f Still further to the left were the cavalry, a small squadron, consisting of some Jacobite gentlemen who had fled from the Lowlands to the mountains, and of about forty of Dundee's old troopers. The horses had been ill fed and ill tended among the Grampians, and looked miserably lean and feeble. Beyond them was Lochiel with his Camerons. On the extreme left, the men of Sky were marshalled by Macdonald of Sleat.t In the Highlands, as in all countries where war had not be- t? ' come a science, men thought it the most important duty of a * Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron ; Mackay's Memoirs, t Douglas's Baronage of Scotland. i Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. 32G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. commander to set an example of personal courage and of bodily exertion. Lochiel was especially renowned for his physical prowess. His clansmen looked big with pride when they rela- ted hoiV he had himself broken hostile ranks and hewn down tall warriors. He probably owed quite as much of his influence to those achievements as to the high qualities which, if fortune had placed him iu the English Parliament or at the French Court, would have made him one of the foremost men of the age. He had the sense however to perceive how erroneous was the no- tion which his countrymen had formed. He knew that to give and to take blows was not the business of a general. He knew with how much difficulty Dundee had been able to keep together, during a few days, an army composed of several clans ; and he knew that what Dundee had effected with difficulty Cannon would not be able to effect at all. The life on which so much depend- ed must not be sacrificed to a barbarous prejudice. Lochiel therefore adjured Dundee not to run into any unnecessary dan- ger. " Your Lordship's business," he said, " is to overlook everything, and to issue your commands. Our business is to ex- ecute those commands bravely and promptly." Dundee answer- ed with cairn magnanimity that there was much weight in what his friend Sir Ewan had urged, but that no general could effect anything great without possessing the confidence of his men. " I must establish my character for courage. Your people ex- pect to see their leaders in the thickest of the battle ; and to- day they shall see me there. I promise you, on my honour, that in future fights, I will take more care of myself." Meanwhile a fire of musketry was kept up on both sides, but more skilfully and more steadily by the regular soldiers than by the mountaineers. The space between the armies was one cloud of smoke. Not a few Highlanders dropped ; and the clans grew impatient. The sun however was low in the west before Dundee gave the order to prepare for action. His men raised a great shout. The enemy, probably exhausted by the toil of the day, returned a feeble and wavering cheer. " We shall do it now," said Lochiel : " that is not the cry of men who are going to win." He had walked through all his ranks, had ad- WILLIAM AND MART. dressed a few words to every Cameron, and had taken from every Cameron a promise to conquer or die.* It was past seven o'clock. Dundee gave the word. The Highlanders dropped their plaids. The few who were so luxu- rious as to wear rude socks of untanned hide spurned them away. It was long remembered in Lochaber that Lochiel took off what probably was the only pair of shoes in his clan, and charged barefoot at the head of his men. The whole line advanced firing. The enemy returned the fire arid did much execution. When only a small space was left between the armies, the High- landers suddenly flung away their firelocks, drew their broad- swords and rushed forward with a fearful yell. The Lowland- ers prepared to receive the shock : but this was then a long and awkward process ; and the soldiers were still fumbling with the muzzles of their guns and the handles of their bayonets when the whole flood of Macleans, Macdonalds, and Camerons came down. In two minutes the battle was lost and won. The ranks of Balfour's regiment broke. He was cloven down while struggling in the press. Ramsay's men turned their backs and dropped their arms. Mackay's own foot were swept away by the furious onset of the Camerons. His brother and nephew exerted themselves in vain to rally the men. The for- mer was laid dead on the ground by a stroke from a claymore. The latter, with eight wounds in his body, made his way through the tumult and carnage to his uncle's side. Even in that extrem- ity Mackay retained all his self-possession. He had still one hope. A charge of horse might recover the day ; for of horse the bravest Highlanders were supposed to stand in awe. But he called on the horse in vain. Belhaven indeed behaved like a gallant gentleman ; but his troopers, appalled by the rout of the infantry, galloped off in disorder : Annandale's men followed : all was over ; and the mingled torrent of redcoats und tartans went raving down the valley to the gorge of Killiecrankie. Mackay, accompanied by one trusty servant, spurred bravely through the thickest of the claymores and targets, and reached a point from which he had a view of the field. His whole army Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron. 328 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. had disappeared, with the exception of some Borderers whom Leven had kept together, and of the English regiment, which had poured a murderous fire into the Celtic ranks, and which still kept unbroken order. All the men that could be collected were only a few hundreds. The general made haste to lead them across the Garry, and, having put that river between them and the enemy, paused for a moment to meditate on his situation. He could hardly understand how the conquerors could be so unwise as to allow him even that moment for deliberation. They might with ease have killed or taken all who were with him before the night closed in. But the energy of the Celtic warriors had spent itself in one furious rush and one short strug- gle. The pass was choked by the twelve hundred beasts of burden which carried the provisions and baggage of the van- quished army. Such a booty was irresistibly tempting to men who were impelled to war quite as much by the desire of rapine as by the desire of glory. It is probable that few even of the chiefs were disposed to leave so rich a prize for the sake of King James. Dundee himself might at that moment have been unable to persuade his followers to quit the heaps of spoil, and to complete the great work of the day ; and Dundee was no more. At the beginning of the action he had taken his place in front of his little band of cavalry. He bade them follow him, and rode forward. But it seemed to be decreed that, on that day, the Lowland Scotch should in both armies appear to dis- advantage. The horse hesitated. Dundee turned round, stood up in his stirrups, and, waving his hat, invited them to come on. As he lifted his arm, his cuirass rose, and exposed the lower part of his left side. A musket ball struck him : his horse sprang forward and plunged into a cloud of smoke and dust, which hid from both armies the fall of the victorious general. A person named Johnstone was near him, and caught him as he sank down from the saddle. '' How goes the day ? " said Dundee. " Well for King James ; " answered Johnstone : " but I am sorry for your Lordship." " If it is well for him," answered WILLIAM AND MARY. 329 the dying man, " it matters the less for me." He never spoke again : but when, half an hour later, Lord Dunfermline and some other friends came to the spot, they thought that they could still discern some faint remains of life. The body, wrapped in two plaids, was carried to the Castle of Blair.* Mackay, who was ignorant of Dundee's fate, and well ac- quainted with Dundee's skill and activity, expected to be instant- ly and hotly pursued, and had very little expectation of being able to save the scanty remains of the vanquished army. He could not retreat by the pass : for the Highlanders were already there. He therefore resolved to push across the mountains towards the valley of the Tay. He soon overtook two or three hundred of his runaways who had taken the same road. Most of them belonged to Ramsay's regiment, and must have seen service. But they were unarmed : they were utterly bewildered by the recent disaster ; and the general could find among them no remains either of martial discipline or of martial spirit. His situation was one which must have severely tried the firmest nerves. Night had set in : he was in a desert : he had no guide : a victorious enemy was, in all human probability, on his track ; and he had to provide for the safety of a crowd of men who had lost both head and heart. He had just suffered a defeat of all defeats the most painful and humiliating. His domestic feelings had been not less severely wounded than his professional feel- ings. One dear kinsman had just been struck dead before his eyes. Another, bleeding from many wounds, moved feebly at his side. But the unfortunate general's courage was sustained by a firm faith in God, and a high sense of duty to the state. In the midst of misery and disgrace, he still held his head nobly erect, and found fortitude, not only for himself, but for * As to the battle, see Mackay's Memoirs, Letters, and Short Relation ; the Memoirs of Dundee ; Memoirs of Sir Ewun Cameron ; Nisbet's and Osburne's depositions in the Appendix to the Act. Parl. of July 14, 1690. See also the account of the battle in one of Burl's Letters. Macpherson printed a letter from Dundee to James dated the day after the battle. I need not say that it is as imp tdent a forgery as Fingal. The author of the Memoirs of Dundee says that Lord Leven was soared by the sight of the Highland weapons, and set the exam- pie of flight. This is a spiteful falsehood. That Leven behaved remarkably well is proved by Mackay's Letters, Memoirs, and Short Kelation. 330 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. all around him. His first care was to be sure of his road. A solitary light which twinkled through the darkness guided him to a small hovel. The inmates spoke no tongue but the Gaelic, and were at first scared by the appearance of uniforms and arms. But Mackay's gentle manner removed their apprehension : their language had been familiar to him in childhood ; and he retained enough of it to communicate with them. By their directions, and by the help of a pocket map, in which the routes through that wild country was roughly laid down, he was able to find his way. He marched all night. When day broke his task was more difficult than ever. Light increased the terror of his companions. Hastings's men and Leveu's men indeed still behaved themselves like soldiers. But the fugitives from Ramsay's were a mere rabble. They had flung away their mus- kets. The broadswords from which they had fled were ever in their eyes. Every fresh object caused a fresh panic. A com- pany of herdsmen in plaids driving cattle was magnified by imagination into a host of Celtic warriors. Some of the runa- ways left the main body and fled to the hills, where their cowardice met with a proper punishment. They were killed for their coats and shoes ; and their naked carcasses were left for a prey to the eagles of Ben Lawers. The desertion would have been much greater, had not Mackay and his officers, pistol in hand, threatened to blow out the brains of any man whom they caught attempting to steal off. At length the weary fugitives came in sight of Weem Castle. The proprietor of the mansion was a friend to the new govern- ment, and extended to them such hospitality as was in his power. His stores of oatmeal were brought out : kine were slaughtered ; and a rude and hasty meal was set before the numerous guests. Thus refreshed, they again set forth, and marched all day over bog, moor, and mountain. Thinly in- habited as the country was, they could plainly see that the report of their disaster had already spread far, and that the population was everywhere in a state of great excitement. Late at night they reached Castle Drummoud, which was held for King WILLIAM AND MART. 331 William by a small garrison ; and, on the following day, they proceeded with less difficulty to Stirling.* The tidings of their Defeat had outrun them. All Scotland was in a ferment. The disaster had indeed been great : but it was exaggerated by the wild hopes of one party and by the wild fears of the other. It was at first believed that the whole army of King William had perished ; that Mackay himself had fallen ; that Dundee, at the head of a great host of barbarians, flushed with victory and impatient for spoil, had already de- scended from the hills ; that he was master of the whole country beyond the Forth ; that Fife was up to join him ; that in three days he would be at Stirling ; that in a week he would be at Holyrood. Messengers were sent to urge a regiment which lay in Northumberland to hasten across the border. Others carried to London earnest entreaties that His Majesty would instantly send every soldier that could be spared, nay, that he would come himself to save his northern kingdom. The factions of the Parliament House, awestruck by the common danger, forgot to wrangle. Courtiers and malecontents with one vgice implored the Lord High Commissioner to close the session, and to dismiss them from a place where their deliberations might soon be inter- rupted by the mountaineers. It was seriously considered whether it might not be expedient to abandon Edinburgh, to send the numerous state prisoners who were in the Castle and the Tol- booth on board of a man of war which lay off Leith, and to transfer the seat of government to Glasgow. The news of Dundee's victory was everywhere speedily fol- lowed by the news of his death ; and it is a strong proof of the extent and vigour of his faculties that his death seems every- where to have been regarded as a complete set off against his victory. Hamilton, before he adjourned the Estates, informed them that he had good tidings for them, that Dundee was cer- tainly dead, and that therefore the rebels had on the whole sustained a defeat. In several letters written at that con juncture by able and experienced politicians a similar opinion is expressed. * Mackay's Memoirs ; Life of General Ilugh Mackay by J. Mackay of Rock- field. 332 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. The messenger who rode with the news of the battle to the English capital was fast followed by another who carried a de- spatch for the King, and, not finding His Majesty at St. James's, galloped to Hampton Court. Nobody in the capital ventured to break the seal : but fortunately, after the letter had been closed, some friendly hand had hastily written on the outside a few words of comfort : " Dundee is killed. Mackay has got to Stirling : " and these words seem to have quieted the minds of the Londoners.* From the pass of Killiecrankie the Highlanders had retired, proud of their victory, and laden with spoil, to the Castle of Blair. They boasted that the field of battle was covered with heaps of Saxon soldiers, and that 1 the appearance of the corpses bore ample testimony to the power of a good Gaelic broadsword in a good Gaelic right hand. Heads were found cloven down to the throat, and skulls struck clean off just above the ears. The conquerors however had bought their victory dear. While they were advancing they had been much galled by the musket- ry of the enemy : and, even after the decisive charge, Hastings's Englishmen and some of Leven's Borderers had continued to keep up a steady fire. A hundred and twenty Camerons had been slain : the loss of the Macdonalds had been still greater ; and several gentlemen of birth and note had fallen. f Dundee was buried in the church of Blair Athol : but no monument was erected over his grave ; and the church itself has long disappeared. A rude stone on the field of battle marks, if local tradition can be trusted, the place where he fell.t During the last three months of his life he had approved himself a great warrior and politician ; and his name is therefore mentioned with respect by that large class of persons who think that there is no excess of wickedness for which courage and ability do not atone. * Letter of the Extraordinary Ambassadors to the Greffier of the States General. August 2-12, 1689 ; and a letter of the ^ame dale from Van Od,yck, who was at Hampton Court. t Memoirs of Sir Ewan Cameron ; Memoirs of Dundee. J The tradition is certainly much more than a hundred and twenty years old. The stone was pointed out to Burt. WILLIAM AND MARY. 333 It is curious that the two most remarkable battles that perhaps were ever gained by irregular over regular troops should have been fought iu the same week ; the battle of Killiecrankie and the battle of Newton Butler. In both battles the success of the irregular troops was singularly rapid and complete. In both battles the panic of the regular troops, iu spite of the conspicuous example of courage set by their generals, was singularly disgrace- ful. It ought also to be noted, that of these extraordinary victories, one was gained by Celts over Saxons, and the other by Saxons over Celts. The victory of Killiecrankie indeed, though neither more splendid cor more important than the victory of Newton Butler, is far more widely renowned ; and the reason is evident. The Anglosaxon and the Celt have been reconciled iu Scotland, and have never been reconciled in Ireland. la Scotland all the great actions of both races are thrown into a common stock, and are considered as making up the glory which belongs to the whole country. So completely has the old antip- athy been extinguished that nothing is more usual than to hear a Lowlander talk with complacency and even with pride of the most humiliating defeat that his ancestors ever underwent. It would be difficult to name any eminent man in whom national feeling and clannish feeling were stronger than in Sir Walter Scott. Yet when Sir Walter Scott mentioned Killiecrankie he seemed utterly to forget that he was a Saxon, that he was of the same blood and of the same speech with Ramsay's foot and Annandale's horse. His heart swelled with triumph when he related how his own kindred had fled like hares before a smaller number of warriors of a different breed and of a different tongue. In Ireland the feud remains annealed. The name of New- ton Butler, insultingly repeated by a minority, is hateful to the great majority of the population. If a monument were set up on the field of battle, it would probably be defaced ; if a festival were held in Cork or Waterford on the anniversary of the battle, it would probably be interrupted by violence. The most illus- trious Irish poet of our time would have thought it treason to his country to sing the praises of the conquerors. One of the 334 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. most learned and diligent Irish archaeologists of our time has laboured, not indeed very successfully, to prove that the event of the day was decided by a mere accident from which the Englishry could derive no glory. We cannot wonder that the victory of the Highlanders should be more celebrated than the victory of the Enniskilleners when we consider that the victory of the Highlanders is matter of boast to all Scotland, and that the victory of the Enniskilleners is matter of shame to three fourths of Ireland. As far as the great interests of the state were concerned, it mattered not at all whether the battle of Killiecrankie were lost or won. It is very improbable that even Dundee, if he had survived the most glorious day of his life, could have surmounted those difficulties which sprang from the peculiar nature of his army, and which would have increased tenfold as soon as the war was transferred to the Lowlands. It is certain that his succes- sor was altogether unequal to the task. During a day or two, indeed, the new general might flatter himself that all would go well. His army was rapidly swollen to near double the number of claymores that Dundee had commanded. The Stewarts of Appin, who, though full of zeal, had not been able to come up in time for the battle, were among the first who arrived. Sev- eral clans who had liithei t j waited to see which side was the stronger, were now eager to descend on the Lowlands under the standard of King James the Seventh. The Grants indeed con- tinued to bear true allegiance to William and Mary ; and the Mackintoshes were kept neutral by unconquerable aversion to Keppoch. But Macphersons, Farquharsons, and Erasers came iu crowds to the camp at Blair. The hesitation of the Athol men was at an end. Many of them had lurked, during the fight, among the crags and birch trees of Killiecrankie, and, as soon as the event of the day was decided, had emerged from those hiding places to strip and butcher the fugitives who tried to escape by the pass. The Robertsons, a Gaelic race, though bearing a Saxou name, gave in at this conjuncture their adhesion to the cause of the exiled King. Their chief Alexander, who took his appellation from his lordship of Struan, was a very young mail WILLIAM AND MART. 335 and a student at the University of St. Andrew's. He had there acquired a smattering of letters, and had been initiated much more deeply into Tory politics. He now joined the Highland army, and continued, through a long life, to be constant to the Jacobite cause. His part, however, in public affairs was so in- significant that his name would not now be remembered, if he had not left a volume of poems, always very stupid and often very profligate. Had this book been manufactured in Grub Street, it would scarcely have been honoured with a quarter of a line in the Dunciad. But it attracted some notice on account of the situation of the writer. For, a hundred and twenty years ago, an eclogue or a lampoon written by a Highland chief was a literary portent.* But, though the numerical strength of Cannon's forces was increasing, their efficiency was diminishing. Every new tribe which joined the camp brought with it some new cause of dis- sension. In the hour of peril, the most arrogant and mutinous spirits will often submit to the guidasce of superior genius. Yet, even in the hour of peril, and even to the genius of Dundee* the Celtic chiefs had yielded but a precarious and imperfect obedience. To restrain them, when intoxicated with success and confident of their strength, would probably hare been too hard a task even for him, as it had been, in the preceding gen- eration, too hard a task for Montrose. The new general did nothing but hesitate and blunder. One of his first acts was to send a large body of men, chiefly Robertsons, down into the low country ior the purpose of collecting provisions. He seems to have supposed that this detachment would without difficulty occupy Perth. But Mackay had already restored order among the remains of his army : he had assembled round him some troops which had not shared in the disgrace of the late defeat ; and he was again ready for action. Cruel as his sufferings had been, he had wisely and magnanimously resolved not to punish what was past. To distinguish between degrees of guilt was * See the History prefixed to the poems of Alexander Robertson. In this his- tory he in represented ns having joined before the battle of Killiecrankie. But it appears from the evidence which is in the Appendix to the Act, Farl. Scot, of July 14, 1690, that he came in on the following day. 336 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. not easy. To decimate the guilty would have been to commit a frightful massacre. His habitual piety too led him to consider the unexampled panic which had seized his soldiers as a proof rather of the divine displeasure than of their cowardice. He acknowledged with heroic humility that the singular firmness which he had himself displayed in the midst of the confusion and havoc was not his own, and that he might well, but for the support of a higher power, have behaved as pusillanimously as any of the wretched runaways who had thrown away their weapons and implored quarter in vain from the barbarous marauders of Athol. His dependence on heaven did not, how- ever, prevent him from applying himself vigorously to the work of providing, as far as human prudence could provide, against the recurrence of such a calamity as that which he had just experienced. The immediate cause of the late defeat was the difficulty of fixing bayonets. The firelock of the Highlander was quite distinct from the weapon which he used in close fight. He discharged his shofe, threw away his gun, and fell on with his sword. This was the work of a moment. It took the regular musketeer two or three minutes to alter his missile o weapon into a weapon with which he could encounter an enemy hand to hand ; and during these two or three minutes the event of the battle of Killiecrankie had been decided. Mackay there- fore ordered all his bayonets to be so formed that they might be screwed upon the barrel, without stopping it up, and that his men might be able to receive a charge the very instant after firing.* As soon as he learned that a detachment of the Gaelic army was advancing towards Perth, he hastened to meet them at the head of a body of dragoons who had not been in the battle, and whose spirit was therefore unbroken. On Wednesday the thirty- first of July, only four days after his defeat, he fell in with the Robertsons, attacked them, routed them, killed a hundred and twenty of them, and took thirty prisoners, with the loss of only agents of tyranny from the fate which they merited, in tho hope that, at some future time, they might serve him as un- scrupulously as they had served his father in law ? * Of the members of the House of Commons who were ani- mated by these feelings, the fiercest and most audacious was Howe. He went so far on one occasion as to move that an en- quiry should be instituted into the proceedings of the Parlia- ment of 1685, and that some note of infamy should be put on all who, in that Parliament, had voted with the Court. This absurd and mischievous motion was 'discountenanced by all the most respectable Whigs, and strongly opposed by Birch and Maynard.f Howe was forced to give way : but he was a man whom no check could a.bash : and he was encouraged by the applau-e of many hotheaded members of his party, who were far from foreseeing that he would, after having been the most rancorous and unprincipled of Whigs, become, at no distant time, the most rancorous and unprincipled of Tories. This quickwitted, restless, and malignant politician, though himself occupying a lucrative place in the royal household, de- claimed, day after day, against the manner in which the great offices of state were filled ; and his declamations were echoed in tones somewhat less sharp and vehement, by other orators. No man, they said, who had been a minister of Charles or of James ou-ht to be a minister of William. The first attack was directed o against the Lord President Caermarthen. Howe moved that an address should be presented to the King, requesting that all persons who had ever been impeached by the Commons might be dismissed from His Majesty's counsels and presence. * Among the numerous pieces in which the malecontent Whigs vented their anger, none is more curious than the poem entitled the Ghost of Charles the Second. Charles addresses William thus : " Hail, my blest Nephew, whom the fates ordain To fill the measure of the Stuarts' reign. That all the ills by our whole race designed In thee their full accomplishment might find : "Tis thou that f.rt decreed this point to clear, Whieh we have laboured for these four-scoie year." f Grey's Debates, June 12, 1089. WILLIAM AND MART. 367 The debate on this motion was repeatedly adjourned. "While the event was doubtful. William sent Dykvelt to expostulate with Howe. Howe was obdurate. He was what is vulgarly called a disinterested man ; that is to say, he valued money less than the pleasure of venting his spleen and of making a sensa- tion. " I am doing the King a service," he said : " I am res- cuing him from false friends ; and, as to my place, that shall never be a gag to prevent me from speaking my mind." The motion was made, but completely failed. In truth the proposi- tion, that mere accusation, never prosecuted to conviction, ought to be considered as a decisive proof of guilt, was shocking to natural justice. The faults of Caermarthen had doubtless been great ; but they had been exaggerated by party spirit, had been expiated by severe suffering, and had been redeemed by recent and eminent services. At the time when he raised the great county of York in arms against Popery and tyranny, he had been assured by some of the most eminent Whigs that all old quarrels were forgotten. Howe indeed maintained that the civilities which had passed in the moment of peril signified no- thing. "When a viper is on my hand," he said, "lam very tender of him : but as soon as I have him on the ground, I set my foot on him and crush him." The Lord President, how- ever, was so strongly supported that, after a discussion which lasted three days, his enemies did not venture to take the sense of the House on the motion against him. In the course of the debate a grave constitutional question was incidentally raised. This question was whether a pardon could be pleaded in bar of a parliamentary impeachment. The Commons resolved without a division, that a pardon could not be so pleaded.* The next attack was made on Halifax. He was in a much more invidious position than Caermarthen, who had. under pre- tence of ill health, withdrawn himself almost entirely from business. Halifax was generally regarded as the chief adviser of the Crown, and was in an especial manner held responsible for all the faults which had been committed with respect to See Commons' Journals, and Grey's Debates, June 1, 3 and 4, 1C89 : Life of William, 1704. 368 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Ireland. The evils which had brought that kingdom to ruin might, it was said, have been averted by timely precaution, or remedied by vigorous exertion.^ But the government had fore- seen nothing : it had done little ; and that little had been done ~ neither at the right time nor in the right way. Negotiation had been employed instead of troops, when a few troops might have sufficed. A few troops had been sent when many were needed. The troops that had been sent had been ill equipped and ill commanded. Such, the vehement Whigs exclaimed, were the natural fruits of that great error which King William had committed on the first day of his reign. lie had placed in Tories and Trimmers a confidence which they did not deserve. He had, in a peculiar manner, entrusted the direction of Irish affairs to the Trimmer of Trimmers, to a man whose ability no- body disputed, but who was not firmly attached to the new gov- ernment, who, indeed, was incapable of being firmly attached to any government, who had always halted between two opinions, and who, till the moment of the flight of James, had not given up the hope that the discontents of the nation might be quieted without a change of dynasty. Howe, on twenty occasions, designated Halifax as the cause of all the calamities of the country. ' Monmouth held similar language in the House of Peers. Though First Lord of the Treasury, he paid nb attention to financial business, for which he was altogether unfit, and of which he had very soon become weary. His whole heart was in the work of persecuting the Tories. He plainly told the King that nobody who was not a Whig ought to be employed in the public service. William's answer was cool and deter- mined. " I have done as much for your friends as I can do without danger to the state ; and I will do no more." * The only effect of this reprimand was to make Monmouth more fac- tious than ever. Against Halifax especially he intrigued and harangued with indefatigable animosity. The other Whig Lords of the Treasury, Delamere and Capel, were scarcely less eager to drive the Lord Privy Seal from office ; and personal * Burnet MS. Harl. 6584 ; Avaux to De Croissy, June 16-26, 1689 WILLIAM AND MART. 3C9 jealousy and antipathy impelled the Lord President to con- spire with his own accusers against his rival. What foundation there may have, been for the imputations thrown at this time on Halifax cannot now be fully ascertained. His enemies, though they interrogated numerous witnesses, and though they obtained William's reluctant permission to in- spect the minutes of the Privy Council, could find no evidence which would support a definite charge.* But it was undeniable that the Lord Privy Seal had acted as minister for Ireland, and that Ireland was all but lost. It is unnecessary, and indeed absurd, to suppose, as many Whigs supposed, that his adminis- tration was unsuccessful because he did not wish it to be success- ful. The truth seems to be that the difficulties of the situation were great, and that he, with all his ingenuity and eloquence, was ill qualified to cope with those difficulties. The whole machinery of government was out of joint ; and he was not the man to set it right. What was wanted was not what he had in large measure, wit, taste, amplitude of comprehension, subtlety in drawing distinctions ; but what he had not, prompt decision, indefatigable energy, and stubborn resolution. His mind was at best of too soft a temper for such work as he had now to do, and had been recently made softer by severe affliction. He had lost two sons in less than twelve months. A letter is still ex- tant, in which he at this time complained to his honoured friend Lady Russell of the desolation of his hearth and of the cruel in- gratitude of the Whigs. We possess, also, the answer, in which she gently exhorted him to seek for consolation where she had found it under trials not less severe than his.f The first attack on him was made in the Upper House. Some Whig Peers, among whom the wayward and petulant First Lord of the Treasury was conspicuous, proposed that the King should be requested to appoint a new Speaker. The friends of Halifax moved and carried the previous question. J About three weeks * As to the minutes of the Privy Council, see the Commons' Journals of June 22 and 2S, and of July 3, 5, 13 and 16. t The letter of Halifax to Lady Russell is dated on the 23d of July 16?, about a fortnight after the attack on him in tlie Lords, and about a week before the attack on him in the Commons. J See the Lords' Journals of July 10, 1689, and a letter from London uuiui VOL. HI. 24 370 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. later his persecutors brought forward, in a Committee of the whole House of Commons, a resolution which imputed to him no particular crime either of omission or of commission, but which simply declared it to be advisable that he should be dismissed from the service of the Crown. The debate was warm. Mod- er,ate politicians of both parties were unwilling to put a stigma on a man, not indeed faultless, but distinguished both by his abili- ties and by his amiable qualities. His accusers saw that they could not carry their point, and tried to escape from a decision which was certain to be adverse to them, by proposing that the Chairman should report progress. But their tactics were discon- certed by the judicious aad spirited conduct of Lord Eland, now the Marquess's only son. " My father has not deserved," said the young nobleman, " to be thus trilled with. If you think him culpable, say so. He will at once submit to your verdict. Dis- mission from Court has no terrors for him. He is raised, by the goodness of God, above the necessity of looking to office for the means of supporting his rank." The Committee divided, and Halifax was absolved by a majority of fourteen.* Had the division been postponed a few hours, the majority would probably have been much greater. The Commons voted under the impression that Londonderry had fallen, and that all Ireland was lost. Scarcely had the House risen when a courier arrived with news that the boom on the Foyle had been broken. July 11-21, and transmitted by Croissy to Avaux. Don Pedro de Ronquillo men- tions this attack of the Whig Lords 011 Halifax in a despatch of which I cannot make out the date. * This was on Saturday the 3d of August. As the division was in Committee, the numbers do not appear in the Journals. Clarendon, in his Diary, says that the n;ajority was eleven. But Narcissus Luttrell, Oldmixon, and Tindal agree in putting it at fourteen. Most of the little information which I have been able to find about the debate is contained in a despatch of Don Pedro de Ronquillo, " Se rosolvio," he says, " que el sabado, en comity de toda la casa, 83 tratasse del estado de la nacion para reprcsentarle al Rey. Empezose por acusar al Marques de Olifax ; y reconociendo sus emulos que no tenian partido bestante, quisieron remitir para otro dia esta mocion : pero el Conde de Elan, primogenito del Mar- ques de Olifax. miembro de la casa, les dijo que su padre no era hombre para andar peloteando con el, y que se tubiesse culpa lo acabasen de castipa'r. que el no havia menester estar en la corte para portarse conforme A su estado, pues Dios le havia dado abundamente para poderlo.ha7er : con que por pluralidad de voces venfio HU partido." I suspect that Lord EIav.d meant to sneer at tha poverty of some of his father's persecutors, and at the greediness of others. WILLIAM AND MART. 371 He was speedily followed by a second, who announced the raising of the siege, and by a third who brought the tidings of the battle of Newton Butler. Hope and exultation succeeded to discontent and dismay.* Ulster was safe ; and it was confi- dently expected that Schomberg would speedily reconquer Leinster, Connaught, and Munster. He was now ready to set out. The port of Chester was the place from which he was' to take his departure. The army which he was to command had assembled there ; and the Dee was crowded with men of war and transports. Unfortunately almost all those English soldiers who had seen war had been sent to Flanders. The bulk of the force destined for. Ireland consisted of men just taken from the plough and the threshing floor. There was, however, an excel- lent brigade of Dutch troops under the command of an expe- rienced officer, the Count of Solmes. Four regiments, one of cavalry and three of infantry, had been formed out of the French refugees, many of whom had borne arras with credit. No person did more to promote the raising of these regiments than the Marquess of Ruvigny. He had been during many years an eminently faithful and useful servant of the French government. So highly was his merit app eciated at Versailles that he had been solicited to accept indulgences which scarcely any other heretic could by any solicitation obtain. Had he chosen to remain in his native country, he and his household would have been permitted to worship God privately according to their own forms. But Ruvigny rejected all offers, cast in his lot with his brethren, and, at upwards of eighty years of age, quitted Ver- sailles, where he might still have been a favourite, for a modest dwelling at Greenwich. That dwelling was, during the last months of his life, the resort of all that was most distinguished among his fellow exiles. His abilities, his experience, and his munificent kindness, made him the undisputed chief of the refugees. He was at the same time half an Englishman : for his sister had been Countess of Southampton, and he was uncle of Lady Russell. He was long past the time of action. But This change of feeling, immediately following the debate ou the motion fox removing Halifax, is noticed by Kouquillo. orZ HISTORY OP ENGLAND. his two sons, both men of eminent courage, devoted their swords to the service of William. The younger son, who bore the name of Caillemot, was appointed colonel of one of the Hu; London Gazette, Aug. 22. WILLIAM AND MART. 875 Ireland, there would be some excitement in those fouthern towns of which the population was chiefly English. Any dis- turbance, wherever it might take place, would furnish an ex- cuse for a general massacre of the Protestants of Leinster, Munster, and Connaught.* As the King did not at first ex- press any horror at this suggestion,! the Envoy, a few days later, returned to the subject, and pressed His Majesty to give the necessary orders. Then James, with a warmth which did him honour, declared that nothing should induce him to commit such a crime. " These people are my subjects : and I cannot be so cruel as to cut their throats while they live peaceably under my government." " There is nothing cruel," answered the callous diplomatist, " in what I recommend. Your Majesty ought to consider that mercy to Protestants is cruelty to Catho- lics." James, however, was not to be moved; and Avaux re- tired in very bad humour. His belief was that the King's pro- fessions of humanity were hypocritical, and that, if the orders for the butchery were not given, they were not given only because His Majesty was confident that the Catholics all over the country would fall on the Protestants without wait- ing for orders. t But Avaux was entirely mistaken. That he should have supposed James to be as profoundly immoral as himself is not strange. But it is strange that so able a man should have forgotten that James and himself had quite differ- ent objects in view. The object of the Ambassador's politics was to make the separation between England and Ireland eter- nal. The object of the King's politics was to unite England and Ireland under his own sceptre ; and he could not but be aware that, if there should be a general massacre of the Protestants of three provinces, and he should be suspected of * " J'estois d'avis qu', apres que la descente seroit faite, si on apprenoit que des Protestaiis se fussent soulevez en quelques endroits du royaume, oil fit main busse sur tous generalement." Avaux. ' " * '' 1 * 16S9. T " Le Roy d'Angleterre m'avoit cout? assez paisiblement la premiere foia qne jelay avois propose ce qu'il y avoit a faire centre les Protestans." Avaux, Aug. 4-14. t Avanx, Ane ' '.-' reprimanded Ayaux, though much too gently, for proposing Sept. 6, to butcher the whole Protestant population of Leinster,Connaught,andMunster. " Je n'approuve pas Dependant la proposition que vous faites de fairc main hasse sur tous les Protestans du royaume, du moment qu', en quelque endroit que ce soit, ils se seront soulevez : et, outre que la punition d'une infinite d'innocens pourpeude counables ne seroit pas juste, d'ailleurs les represailles contre les Oatholiques seroient d'autant plus dangereuses, que les premiers se trouveront niieux armez et soutenus de toutes les forces d'Angleterre." t Ronqnillo. Aug. 9-19 speaking of the Siege of Londonderry, expresses his astonishment "que una plaza sin fortificazion y sin gentes de guerra aya hecho vna defensa tan gloriosa, y que los sHiadores al coutrario ayan sido tan pol' ti-oneB." WILLIAM AND MART. 377 were generally men of good family, but men who had never seen service. The captains were butchers, tailors, shoemakers. Hardly one of them troubled himself about the comforts, the accoutre- ments, or the drilling of those over whom he was placed. The dragoons were little better than the infantry. But the horse were, with some exceptions, excellent. Almost all the Irish gentlemen who had any military experience held commissions in the cavalry ; and by the exertions of these officers, some regi- ments had been raised and disciplined which Avaux pronounced equal to any that he had ever seen. It was therefore evident that the inefficiency of the foot and of the dragoons was to be ascribed to the vices, not of the Irish character but of the Irish administration.* The events which took place in the autumn of 1 689 sufficient- ly proved that the ill fated race, which enemies and allies gene- rally agreed in regarding with unjust contempt, had, together with the faults inseparable from poverty, ignorance, and super- stition, some fine qualities which have not always been found in more prosperous and more enlightened communities. The-evil tidings which terrified and bewildered James stirred the whole population of the southern provinces like the peal of a trumpet sounding to battle. That Ulster was lost, that the English were coming, that the death grapple between the two hostile nations This account of the Irish army is compiled from numerous letters written by Avaux to Lewis and to Lewis's ministers. I will quote a few of the most remark- able passages. " Les plus beaux hommes," Avaux says of the Irish, " qu'on peut voir. II n'y en a presque point au clessous de cinq pieds cinq a six pouces." It will be remembered that the French foot is longer than ours. " Us sont tres bieii faits : mais ils ne sont ny disciplinez ny armez, et de surplus sent de grands voleurs." " La plupart de ces regimens sont levez par des geiuilshommes qui n'ont jamais est6 a I'avm^e. Ce sont des taiileurs. des bouchers, des cordonniers, qui ont forme les compagnies et qui en sont les Capitaines." " Jamais troupes n'ont mareh6 comme font cellescy. Ils vont oomme des bandits, et pillent tout ce qu'ils trouvent en ehemin." "Quoiqu'il soil vroi que les soldats paroissent fort n'sol'.is a bien faire, et qu'ils soient fort animez contre les rebelles, ne'ant- moins il ne suffit pas de cela pour combattre Les officiers subalternes sont mauvais, et, a la reserve d'un tres petit nombre, il n'y en a point qui ayt soin des soldats, des annes, et de la discipline." " On a beaucoup plus de confiance en la cavalerie. dont la plus grande partie est assfz bonne." Avaux mentions several regiments of horse with particular praise. Of two of these he says, " On nepeut voir de meilleur rtgiment." The correctness of the opinion which he had formed both of the infantry and of the cavalry was, after his departure from Ireland, sigually proved at the Buyiie. 378 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. was at hand, was proclaimed from all the altars of three and twenty counties. One last chance was left ; and, if that chance failed, nothing remained but the despotic, the merciless, rule of the Saxon colony and of the heretical church. The Roman Catholic priest who had just taken possession of the glebe house and the chancel, the Roman Catholic squire who had just been carried back on the shoulders of the shouting tenantry into the hall of his fathers, would be driven forth to live on such alms as peasants, themselves oppressed and miserable, could spare. A new confiscation would complete the work of the Act of Settle- ment ; and the followers of William would seize whatever the followers of Cromwell had spared. These apprehensions pro- duced such an outbreak of patriotic and religious enthusiasm as deferred for a time the inevitable day of subjugation. Avaux was amazed by the energy which, in circumstances so trying, the Irish displayed. It was indeed the wild and unsteady energy of a half barbarous people : it was transient : it was often misdirect- ed : but though transient and misdirected, it did wonders. The French Ambassador was forced to own that those officers of whose incompetency and inactivity he had so often complained had suddenly shaken off their lethargy. Recruits came in by thousands. The ranks which had been thinned under the walls of Londonderry were soon again full to overflowing. Great efforts were made to arm and clothe the troops ; and, in the short space of a fortnight, everything presented a new and cheering aspect.* The Irish required of the King, in return for their strenu- ous exertions in his cause, one concession which was by no means agreeable to him. The unpopularity of Melfort had become such that his person was scarcely safe. He had no friend to spe/.k a word in his favour. The French hated him. In every letter which arrived at Dublin from England or from Scotland, * I will quote a passage or two from the despatches written at this time by Avaux. On September 7-17, he says : " De quelque cosl6 qu'on se tournat on ne pouvoit rien prevoir que de desagreafole. Mais dans cette extremity chacun s'est (Svertue. Les officiers out fait leurs recrues avec beaneoup de diligence." Three days later he says : " II y a quinze jours que nons n'esperions gnere de pouvoir mettre les choses en si hori estat : mais my Lord Tyrconnel et tons lea Irlandais ont travailJe avec tant d'empressement qu'oii s'est mis eu estat de deilense." WILLIAM AND MART. 379 he was described as the evil genius of the House of Stuart. It was necessary for his own sake to dismiss him. An honourable pretext was found. He was ordered to repair to Versailles, to represent there the state of affairs in Ireland, and to implore the French government to send over without delay six or seven thousand veteran infantry. He laid down the seals ; and they were, to the great delight of the Irish, put into the hands of an Irishman, Sir Richard Nagle, who had made himself conspicuous as Attorney General and speaker of the House of Commons. Mel fort took his departure under cover of the night : for the rage of the populace against him was such that he could not with- out danger show himself in the streets of Dublin by day. On the following morning James left his capital in the opposite direction to encounter Schomberg.* Schomberg had landed in the north of Ulster. The force which he had brought with him did not exceed ten thousand men. But he expected to be joined by the armed colonists and by the regiments which were under Kirke.'s command. The coffeehouse politicians of London fully expected that such a general with such an army would speedily reconquer the island. Unhappily it soon appeared that the means which had been furnished to him were altogether inadequate to the work which he had to per- form : of the greater part of these means he was speedily deprived by a succession of unforeseen calamities ; and the whole cam- paign was merely a long struggle maintained by his prudence and resolution against the utmost spite of fortune. He marched first to Carrickfergus. That town was held for James by two regiments of infantry. Schomberg battered the walls ; and the Irish, after holding out a week, capitulated. He promised that they should depart unharmed ; but he found it no easy matter to keep his word. The people of the town and neighbourhood were generally Protestants of Scottish extrac- tion. They had suffered mnch during the short ascendency of the native race ; and what they had suffered they were now * Avaux, Aug. 20-30' * u ?~- t^^r-J Li ^ of James, ii.,373 ; Melfort's vindi- Sept. -1. ?ept. 5, ration of himself amonj the Xairrie Papers. Ayaux says : "II ponrra pnrtlr oe Foir a la nuit : oar je vote bieu qu'il apprehende qu'il ne sera pas sur oour luy do part ir en plein jour." 380 kflSTORT OF ENGLAND. eager to retaliate. They assembled in great multitudes, ex- claiming that the capitulation was nothing to them, and that they would be revenged. They soon proceeded from words to blows. The Irish disarmed, stripped, and hustled, clung for protection to the English officers and soldiers. Schomberg with difficulty prevented a massacre by spurring, pistol in hand, through the throng of enraged colonists.* From Carrickfergus Schomberg proceeded to Lisburn, and thence, through towns left without an inhabitant, and over plains on which not a cow, nor a sheep, nor a stack of corn was to be seen, to Loughbrickland. Here he was joined by three regiments of Enniskilleners, whose dress, horses, and arms looked strange to eyes accustomed to the pomp of reviews, but who in natural courage were inferior to no troops in the world, and who had, during months of constant watching and skirmishing, acquired many of the essential qualities of soldiers.f Schomberg continued to advance towards Dublin through a desert. The few Irish troops which remained in the south of Ulster retreated before him, destroying as they retreated. Newry, once a well built and thriving Protestant borough, he found a heap of smoking ashes. Carlingford too had perished. The spot where the town had once stood was marked only by the massy remains of the old Norman castle. Those who ven- tured to wander from the camp reported that the country, as far as they could explore it, was a wilderness. There were cabins, but no inmates : there was rich, pasture, but neither flock nor herd : there were cornfields : but the harvest lay on the ground soaked with rain.J While Schomberg was advancing through a vast solitude, the Irish forces were rapidly assembling from every quarter. On the tenth of September the royal standard of James was un- furled on the tower of Drogheda ; and beneath it were soon collected twenty thousand fighting men, the infantry generally bad, the cavalry generally good, but both infantry and cavalry * Story's Impartial History of the Wars of Ireland, 1693 ; Life of James, ii. 374 ; Avaux, Sept. 7-17, 1689 ; Nihell's Journal, printed in 1689, aiid reprinted by Macpherson. t Story's Impartial History. t Ibid. WILLIAM AND THARY. 381 full of zeal for their country and their religion.* The troops were attended as usual by a great multitude of camp followers, armed with scythes, half pikes, and skeans. By this time Schom- berg. had reached Dundalk. The distance between the two armies was not more than a long day's march. It was therefore generally expected that the fate of the island would speedily be decided by a pitched battte. Jn both camps, all who did not understand war were eager to fight ; and, in both camps, the few who had a high reputa- tion for military science were against fighting. Neither Rosen nor Schomberg wished to put everything on a cast. Each of them knew intimately the defects of his own army ; and neither of them was fully aware of the defects of the other's army. Rosen was certain that the Irish infantry were worse equipped, worse officered, and worse drilled, than any infantry that he had ever seen from the Gulf of Bothnia to the Atlantic ; and he supposed that the English troops were well trained, and were, as they doubtless ought to have been, amply provided with everything necessary to their efficiency. Numbers, he rightly judged, would avail little against a great superiority of arms and discipline. He therefore advised James to fall back, and even to abandon Dublin to the enemy rather than hazard a buttle the loss of which would be the loss of all. Athlone was the best place in the kingdom for a determined stand. The passage of the Shannon might be defended till the succours which Melfort had been charged to solicit came from France ; and those succours would change the whole character of the war. But the Irish, with Tyrconnel at their head, were unanimous against retreating. The blood of the whole nation was up. James was pleased with the enthusiasm of his subjects, and pos- itively declared that he would not disgrace himself by leaving his capital to the invaders without a blow.f In a few days it became clear that Schomberg had deter- mined not to fight. His reasons were weighty. He had * Avaux. Sept. 10-20, 1689 ; Story's Impartial History ; Life of James, ii. 377, 378, Orig. Mem. Story and James agree in estimating the Irish army at about twenty thousand men. See also Dangeau, Oct. 28, 1689. t Life of James, ii. 377, 378, Orig. kern. 382 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. V 'V some good Dutch and French troops. The Enniskilleners who had joined him had served a military apprenticeship, though not in a very regular manner. But the bulk of his army con- sisted of English peasants who had just left their cottages. His musketeers had still to learn how to load their pieces ; his dra- goons had still to learn how to manage their horses ; and these - inexperienced recruits were for the most part commanded by officers as inexperienced as themselves. His troops were there- fore not generally superior in discipline to the Irish, and were in number far inferior. Nay, he found that his men were al- most as ill armed, as ill lodged, and as ill clad, as the Celts to whom they were opposed. The wealth of f he English nation and the liberal votes of the English parliament had entitled him to expect that he should be abundantly supplied with all the munitions of war. But he was cruelly disappointed. The administration had, ever since the death of Oliver, been con- stantly becoming more and more imbecile, more and more cor- rupt ; and now the Revolution reaped what the Restoration had sown. A crowd of negligent or ravenous functionaries, formed under Charles and James, plundered, starved, and poi- soned the armies and fleets of William. Of these men the most important was Henry Shales, who, in the late reign, had been Commissary General to the camp at Hounslow. It is difficult to blame the new government for continuing to employ him : for, in his own department, his experience far surpassed that of any other Englishman. Unfortunately, in the same school in which he had acquired his experience, he had learned the whole art of peculation. The beef and brandy which he furnished were so bad that the soldiers turned from them with loathing : the tents were rotten : the clothing was scanty ; the muskets broke in the handling. Great numbers of shoes were set down to the account of the government : but, two months after the Treasury had paid the bill, the shoes had not arrived in Ireland. The means of transporting baggage and artillery were almost entirely wanting. An ample number of horses had been purchased in England with the public money, and had been sent to the bunks of the Pee. But Shales had let them WILLIAM AND MART. 383 out for harvest work to the farmers of Cheshire, had pocketed the hire, and had left the troops in Ulster to get on as they best might.* Schomberg thought that, if he should, with an ill trained and ill appointed army, risk a battle against a superior force, he might not improbably be defeated ; and he knew that a defeat might be followed by the loss of one kingdom, perhaps by the loss of three kingdoms. He therefore made up his mind to stand on the defensive till his men had been disciplined, and till reinforcements and supplies should arrive. Pie entrenched himself near Dundalk in such a manner that he could not be forced to fight against his will. James, em- boldened by the caution of his adversary, and disregarding the advice of Rosen advanced to Ardee, appeared at the head of the whole Irish army before the English lines,drew up horse,foot,and artillery, in order of battle,and displayed his banner. The English were impatient to fall on. But their general had made up his mind and was not to be moved by the bravadoes of the enemy or by the murmurs of his own soldiers. During some weeks he re- mained secure within his defences, while the Irish lay a few miles off. He set himself assiduously to drill those new levies which formed the greater part of his army. He ordered the musketeers to be constantly exercised in firing, sometimes at marks, and sometimes by platoons ; and, from the way in which they at first acquitted themselves, it plainly appeared that he had judged wisely in not leading them out to battle. It was found that not one in four of the English soldiers could manage his piece at all ; and whoever succeeded in discharging it, no matter in what direction, thought that he had performed a great feat. While the Duke was thus employed, the Irish eyed his camp without daring to attack it. But within that camp soon appeared two evils more terrible than the foe, treason and pesti- lence. Among the best troops under his command were the French exiles. And now a grave doubt arose touching their fidelity. The real Huguenot refugee -indeed might safely be See Grey's Debates, 'Nov. 26, 27, 28. 1689, and the Dialogue between a Lieutenant and one of his Deputies, 1G92. 384 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. trusted. The dislike with which the most zealous English Protestant regarded the House of Bourbon and the Church of Rome was a lukewarm feeling when compared with that inex- tinguishable hatred which glowed in the bosom of the persecu- ted, dragooned, expatriated Calvin'st of Languedoc. The Irish had already remarked that the French heretic neither gave nor took quarter.* Now, however, it was found that with those emigrants who had sacrificed everything for the reformed religion were intermingled emigrants of a very different sort, deserters who had run away from their standards in the Low Countries, and had coloured their crime by pretending that they were Protes- tants, and that their conscience would not suffer them to fight for the persecutor of their Church. Some of these men, hoping that by a second treason they might obtain both pardon and re- ward, opened a correspondence with Avaux. The letters were intercepted ; and a formidable plot was brought to light. It appeared that, if Schomberg had been weak enough to yield to the importunity of those who wished him to give battle, several French companies would, in the heat of the action, have fired on the English, and gone over to the enemy. Such a defection might well have produced a general panic in a better army than that which was encamped under Dundalk. It was necessary to be severe. Six of the conspirators were hanged. Two hundred of their accomplices were sent in irons to England. Even after this winnxnving, the refugees were long regarded by the rest of the army with unjust but not unnatural suspicion. Dur- ing some days indeed there was great reason to fear that the enemy would be entertained with a bloody fight between the English soldiers and their French allies, f A few hours before the execution of the chief conspirators, a general muster of the army was held ; and it was observed Nihell's Journal. A French officer, in a letter to Avaux, written soon after Schomberg' landing, eays, " Le.s Huguenots font plus de mal que lea Anglois, et tuent force Catholiques pour avoir fait resistance." t Story ; Narrative transmitted by Avaux to Seignelay, ^ 6 -' 1689 ; London <3a70tto, Oct. 14, 1081. Tt is curious that, though Pumont was in the camp before Dundalk, there is in his MS. no mention of the conspiracy among the French. WILLIAM AND MARY. 385 that the ranks of the English battalions looked thin. From the first day of tho campaign, there had been much sickness among the recruits : but it was not till the time of the equinox that the mortality became alarming. The autumnal rains of Ireland are usually heavy ; and this year they were heavier than usual. The whole country was deluged ; and the Duke's camp became a marsh. The Euniskillen men were seasoned to the climate. The Dutch were accustomed to live in a country which, as a wit of that age said, draws fifty feet of water. They kept their huts dry and clean ; and they had experienced and careful officers who did not suffer them to omit any precaution. But the peasants of Yorkshire and Derbyshire had neither constitutions prepared to resist the pernicious influence, nor skill to protect themselves against it. The bad provisions furnished by the Commissariat aggravated the maladies generated by the air. Remedies were almost entirely wanting. The surgeons were few. The medicine chest contained little more than lint and plasters for wounds. The English sickened and died by hundreds. Even those who were not smitten bj the pestilence were un- nerved and dejected, and, instead of putting forth the energy which is the heritage of our race, awaited their fate with the helpless apathy of Asiatics. It was in vain that Schomberg tried to teach them to improve their habitations, and to cover the wet earth with a thick carpet of fern. Exertion had become more dreadful to them than death. It was not to be expected that men who would not help themselves should help each other. Nobody asked and nobody showed compassion. Familiarity with ghastly spectacles produced a hardheartedness and a desperate impiety of which an example will not easily be found even in the history of infectious diseases. The moans of the sick were drowned by the blasphemy and ribaldry of their comrades. Sometimes, seated on the body of a wretch who had died in the morning, might be seen a wretch destined to die before night, cursing, singing loose songs, and swallowing usquebaugh to the health of the devil. AY hen the corpses were taken away to be buried the survivors grumbled. A dead man, they said, was a good screen and a good stool. Why, when there was so abuud- VOL. III. 25 386 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ant a supply of such useful articles of furniture, were people to be exposed to the cold air and forced to crouch on the moist ground.* Many of the sick were sent by the English vessels which lay off the coast to Belfast, where a great hospital had been prepared. But scarce half of them lived to the end of the voyage. More than one ship lay long in the bay of Carrickfergus, heaped with carcasses, and exhaling the stench of death, without a living man on board.f The Irish army suffered much less. The kerne of Munster or Connaught was quite as well off in the camp as if he had been in his own mud cabin inhaling the vapours of his own quagmire. He naturally exulted in the distress of the Saxon heretics, and flattered himself that they would be destroyed without a blow. He heard with delight the guns pealing all day over the graves of the English officers, till at length the funerals became too numerous to be celebrated with military pomp, and the mournful sounds were succeeded by a silence more mournful still. The superiority of force was now so decidedly on the side of James that he could safely venture to detach five regiments from his army, and to send them into Connaught. Sarsfield com- manded them. He did not, indeed, stand so high as he deserved in the royal estimation. The King, with an air of intellectual superiority which must have made Avaux and Rosen bite their lips, pronounced him a brave fellow, but very scantily supplied with brains. It was not without great difficulty that the Am- bassador prevailed on His Majesty to raise the best officer in the Irish army to the rank of Brigadier. Sarsfield now fully vin- dicated the favourable opinion which his French patrons had formed of him. He dislodged the English from Sligo ; and he effectually secured Galway, which had been in considerable danger.^ * Story's Impartial History ; Dumont MS. The profaneness and dissolute- ness of the camp during the sickness are mentioned in many contemporary pam- phlets both in verse and prose. See particularly a Satire entitled Iteforniation of Manners, part ii. . t Story's Impartial History. t Avaux, Oct. 11-21, Nov. 14-24,1689; Story's Impartial History; Life of Jatnes, ii. 382, 383, Orig. Mem. ; Kiliell's Journal. WILLIAM AND MARY. 387 No attack, however, was made on the English entrenchments before Dundalk. In the midst of difficulties and disasters hourly multiplying, the great qualities of Schomberg appeared hourly more and more conspicuous. Is ot in the full tide of success, not on- the field of Monies Claros, not under the walls of Maestricht, had he so well deserved the admiration of mankind. His resolution never gave way. His prudence never slept. His temper, in spite of manifold vexations and provocations, was always cheerful and serene. The effective men under his com- mand, even if all were reckoned as effective who were not stretched on the earth by fever, did not now exceed five thousand. These were hardly equal to their ordinary duty ; and yet it was necessary to harass them with double duty. Nevertheless so masterly were the old man's dispositions that with this small force he faced during several weeks twenty thousand troops who were accompanied by a multitude of armed banditti. At length early in November the Irish dispersed, and went to winter quarters. The Duke then broke up his camp and retired into Ulster. Just as the Remains of his army were about to move, a rumour spread that the enemy was approaching in great force. Had this rumour been true, the danger would have been extreme. But the English regiments, though they had been reduced to a third part of their complement, and though the men who were in best health were hardly able to shoulder arms, showed a strange joy and alacrity at the prospect of battle, and swore that the Papists should pay for all the misery of the last month. " We English," Schomberg said, identifying himself good- humouredly with the people of the country which had adopted him, " we English have stomach enougli for fighting. It is a pity, that we are not as fond of some other parts of a soldier's business." The alarm proved false. The Duke's army departed un- molested : but the highway along which he retired presented a piteous and hideous spectacle. A long train of waggons laden with the sick jolted over the rugged pavement. At every jolt some wretched man gave up the ghost. The corpse was flung out and left unburied to the foxes and crows. The whole uuna- 388 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ber of those who died, in the camp at Dundalk, in the hospital at Belfast, on the road, and on the sea, amounted to above six thousand. The survivors were quartered for the winter in the towns and villages of Ulster. The general fixed his head quar- ters at Lisburn.* His conduct was variously judged. Wise and candid men said that he had surpassed himself, and that there was no other captain in Europe who, with raw troops, with ignorant officers, with scanty stores, having to contend at once against a hostile army of greatly superior force, against a villanous commissariat, against a nest of traitors in his own camp, and against a disease more murderous than the sword, would have brought the cam- paign to a close without the loss of a flag or a gun. On the other hand, many of those newly commissioned majors and captains, whose helplessness had increased all his perplexities, and who had not one qualification for their post except personal courage, grumbled at the skill and patience which had saved them from destruction. Their complaints were echoed on the other side of Saint George's Channel. Some of the murmuring, though unjust, was excusable. The parents, who had sent a gallant lad, in his first uniform, to fight his way to glory, might be pardoned if, when they learned that he had died on a wisp of straw without medical attendance, and had been buried in a swamp without any Christian or military ceremony, their affliction made them hasty and unreasonable. But with the cry of bereaved families was mingled another cry much less respectable. All the hearers and tellers of news abused the general who furnished them with so little news to hear and to tell. For men of that sort are so greedy after excitement that they far more readily forgive a commander who loses a battle than a commander who declines one. The politicians who delivered their oracles from the thick- * Story's Impartial History ; Schomberg's Despatches; NihelPs Journal, and James's Life; Burnet, ii. '2',) ; Dangeau's journal during this autumn ; the Nar- rative sent by Avaux to Seignelay, and the Dumout MS. The lying of the Lon- don Gazette is monstrous. Through the whole autumn the troo;>s are constantly said to be in good condition. In the absurd d:'ama entitled the Royal Voyage, which was acted for the amusement of the rabble of London in 1689, the Irish are represented as attacking some of the sick English. The English put thfe assail- ants to the rout, and theu drop dowu dead. WILLIAM AND MART. 389 est cloud of tobacco smoke at Garroway's, confidently asked, with- out knowing anything, either of war in general, or o Irish war in particular, why Schomberg did not light. They could not venture to say that he did not understand his calling. He had, in his day, they acknowledged, been an excellent officer : but he was very old. He seemed to bear his years well : but his facul- ties were not what they had been : his memory was failing ; and it was well known that he sometimes forgot in the afternoon what he had done in the morning. It may be doubted whether there ever existed a human being whose mind was quite as firmly toned at eighty as at forty. But that Schomberg's intellectual powers had been little impaired by years is sufficiently proved by his despatches, which are still extant, and which are models of official writing, terse, perspicuous, full of important facts and weighty reasons, compressed into the smallest possible number of words. In those despatches he sometimes alluded, not angrily, but with calm disdain, to the censures thrown upon his conduct by shallow babblers, who, never having seen any mili- tary operation more important than the relieving of the guard at Whitehall, imagined that the easiest thing in the world was to gain great victories in any situation and against any odds, and by sturdy patriots who were convinced that one English carter or thresher, who had not yet learned how to load a gun or port a pike, was a match for any six musketeers of King Lewis's household.* Unsatisfactory as had been the results of the campaign in Ireland, the results of the maritime operations of the year were more unsatisfactory still. It had been confidently expected that, on the sea, England, allied with Holland, would have been far more than a match for the power of Lewis : but everything went wrong. Herbert had, after the unimportant skirmish of Bantry Bay, returned with his squadron to Portsmouth. There he found that he had not lost the good opinion either of the public or of the government. The House of Commons thanked him for his services ; and he received s'gnal marks of the favor of the Crown. He had not been at the coronation, and had there- See his despatches in the Appendix to Dalrymple's Memoirs. 390 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. fore missed his share of the rewards which, at the time of that solemnity, had been distributed among the chief agents in the Revolution. The omission was now repaired ; and he was created Earl of Torrington. The King went down to Ports- mouth, dined on board of the Admiral's flag ship, expressed the fullest confidence in the valour and loyalty of the navy, knighted two gallant captains, Cloudesley Shovel and John Ashby, and ordered a donative to be divided among the seamen.* We cannot justly blame William for having a high opinion of Torrington. For Torrington was generally regarded as one of the bravest and most skilful officers in the navy. He had been promoted to the rank of Rear Admiral of England by James who, if he understood anything, 'understood maritime affairs. That place and other lucrative places Torrington had relin- quished when he found that he could retain them only by sub- mitting to be a tool of the Jesuitical cabal. No man had taken a more active, a more hazardous, or a more useful part in effect- ing the Revolution. It seemed, therefore, that no man had fairer pretensions to be put at the head of the naval adminis- tration. Yet no man could be more unfit for such a post. His morals had always been loose, so loose indeed that the firmness with which in the late reign he had adhered to his religion had excited much surprise. His glorious disgrace indeed seemed to have produced a salutary effect on his charac- ter. In poverty and exile he rose from a voluptuary into a hero. But, as soon as prosperity returned, the hero sank again into a voluptuary ; and the relapse was deep and hopeless. The nerves of his mind, which had been during a short time braced to a high tone, were now so much relaxed by vice that he was utterly incapable of selfdenial or of strenuous exertion. The vulgar counge of a foremast man he still retained. But both as Admira? and as First Lord of the Admiralty he was utterly inefficient Month after month the fleet which should have been the terror of the seas lay in harbour while he was diverting himself in London. The sailors, punning upon his new title, ga'^ 'ot altogether drown the voices of those who muttered that, wherever a broad piece was to be saved or got, this hero was a mere Euclio, a mere Harpagon ; * See the despatch of Waldeck in the London Gazette, Aug. 26, 1689 ; His- torical Records of the First Regiment of Foot ; Dangeau, Aug. 28 ; Monthly- Mercury, September 1089. WILLIAM AND MART. 395 that, though he drew a large allowance under pretence of keep- ing a public table, he never asked an officer to dinner ; that his muster rolls were fraudulently made up ; that he pocketed pay in the names of men who had long been dead, of men who had been killed in his own sight four years before at Sedgemoor ; that there were twenty such names in one troop ; that there were thirty-six in another. Nothing but the union of dauntless courage and commanding powers of mind with a bland temper and winning manners could have enabled him to gain and keep, in spite of faults eminently unsoldierlike, the good will of his soldiers.* About the time at which the contending armies in every part of Europe were going into winter quarters, a new Pontiff ascended the chair of Saint Peter. Innocent the Eleventh was no more. His fate had been strange indeed. His conscientious and fervent attachment to the Church of which he was the head had induced him, at one of the most critical conjunctures in her history, to ally himself with her mortal enemies. The news of his decease was received with concern and alarm by Protestant princes and commonwealths, and with joy and hope at Versailles and Dublin. An extraordinary ambassador of high rank was instantly despatched by Lewis to Rome. The French garrison which had been placed in Avignon was withdrawn. When the votes of the Coaclave had been united in favour of Peter Otto- buoni, an ancient Cardinal who assumed the appellation of Alexander the Eighth, the representative of France assisted at the installation, bore up the cope of the new Pontiff, and put into the hands of His Holiness a letter in which the most Chris- tian King declared that he renounced the odious privilege of protecting robbers and assassins. Alexander pressed the letter to his lips, embraced the bearer, and talked with rapture of the near prospect of reconciliation. Lewis began to entertain a hope that the influence of the Vatican might be .exerted to dis- solve the alliance between the House of Austria and the hereti- * See the Dear Bargain, a Jacobite pamphlet, clandestinely printed in 1690. "I have not patience," says the writer, ''after this wretch (Marlborough) to mention any other. All are iunote it comparatively, even Kirke himself." 39G HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. cal usurper of the English throne. James was even more s.-w- gulne. He was foolish enough to expect that the new pope would give him money, and ordered Melfort, who had now acquitted himself of his mission at Versailles, to hasten to Rome, and beg His Holiness to contribute something towards the good work of upholding pure religion in the British islands. But it soon appeared that Alexander, though he might hold language different from that of his predecessor, was determined to follow in essentials his predecessor's policy. The original cause of the quarrel between the Holy See and Lewis was not removed. The King continued to appoint prelates: the Pope continued to refuse them institution ; and the consequence was that a fourth part of the dioceses of Franca had bishops who were incapable of performing any episcopal function.* The Anglican Church was, at this time, not lees distracted than the Galilean Church. The first of August had been fixed by Act of Parliament as the day before the close of which all beneficed clergymen and all persons holding academical offices must, on pain of suspension, swear allegianco to William and Mary. During the earlier part of the summer, the Jacobites had hoped that the number of nonjurors would be so considera- ble as seriously to alarm and embarrass the government. But this hope was disappointed. Few indeed of the clergy were Whigs. Few were Tories of that moderate school which ac- knowledged, reluctantly and with reserve, that extreme abuses might sometimes justify a nation in resorting to extreme reme- dies. The great majority of the profession still held the doc- trine of passive obedience : but that majority was now divided into two sections. A question, which, before the Revolution, had been mere matter of speculation, and had therefore, though sometimes incidentally raised, been, by most persons, very super- ficially considered, had now become practically most important. The doctrine of passive obedience being taken for granted, to * See the Mercn i:?s for September 1GF9, and the four following months. See also Wal.voo 1's Mercarhia Itsformatus of Sept. 1H, Sept. 2o, and Oct. 8, 1C89. Melton's Instructions, a-;d his memorials to the Fops and the Cardinal of Tste, are among tbe Nairne Papers ; and some extracts have b^eii printed by Mac- phorsou. WILLIAM AND MARY 397 whom was that obedience due ? While the hereditary right and the possession were conjoined, there was no room for doubt: but the hereditary right and the possession were now separated. One prince raised by the Revolution, was reigning at West- minster, passing laws, appointing magistrates and prelates, send- ing forth armies and fleets. His judges decided causes. His Sheriffs arrested debtors, and executed criminals. Justice, order, property, would cease to exist, and .society would be re- solved into chaos, but for his Great Seal. Another prince, deposed by the Revolution, was living abroad. He could exercise none of the powers and perform none of the duties of a ruler, and could, as it seemed, be restored only by means as violent as those by which he had been displaced. To which of these two princes did Christian men owe allegiance ? To a large part of the clergy it appeared that the plain letter ef Scripture required them to submit to the Sovereign who was in possession, without troubling themselves about his title. The powers which the Apostle, in the text most familiar to the Anglican divines of that age, pronounces to be ordained of God, are not the powers that can be traced back to a legitimate origin, but tho powers that be. When Jesus was asked whether the chosen people might lawfully give tribute to Caesar, he replied by asking the questioners, not whether Cassar could make out a pedigree derived from the old royal house of Judah, but whether the coin which they scrupled to pay into Caesar's treasury camo from Caesar's mint, in other words, whether Caesar actually possessed the authority and performed the functions of a ruler. It is generally held, with much appearance of reason, that the most -trust worthy comment on the text of the Gospels and Epistles is to be found in the practice of the primitive Christians, when that practice can be satisfactorily ascertained ; and it so happened that the times during which the Church is universally acknowledged to have been in the highest state of purity were times of frequent and violent political change. One at least of the Apostles appears to have lived to see four Emperors pulled down in little more than a year. Of the martyrs of the third century a great proportion must have been able to remember 398 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. ten or twelve revolutions. Those martyrs must have had occa- sion often to consider what was their duty towards a prince just raised to power by a successful insurrection. That they were, one and all, deterred by the fear of punishment from doing what they thought right, is an imputation which no candid infidel would throw on them. Yet, if there be any proposition which can with perfect confidence be affirmed touching the early Chris- tians, it is this, that they never once refused obedience to any actual ruler on account of the illegitimacy of his title. At one time, indeed, the supreme power was claimed by twenty or thirty competitors. Every province from Britain to Egypt had its own Augustus. All these pretenders could not be rightful Emperors. Yet it does not appear that, in ary place, the faith- ful had any scruple about submitting to the person who, in that place, exercised the imperial functions. While the Christian of Rome obeyed Aurelian, the Christian of Lyons obeyed Tetri- cus, and the Christian of Palmy ra^beyed Zenobia. " Day and night," such were the words which the great Cyprian, Bishop of Carthage, addressed to the representative of Valerian and Gallienus, " day and night do we Christians pray to the one true God for the safety of our Emperors." Yet those Emperors had a few months before pulled down their predecessor -ZErnilia- nus, who had pulled down his predecessor Gallus, who had climbed to power on the ruins of the house of his predecessor Decius, who had slain his predecessor Philip, who had slain his predecessor Gordian. "Was it possible to believe that a saint, who had, in the short space of thirteen or fourteen years, borne true allegiance to this series of rebels and regicides, would have made a schism in the Christian body rather than acknowledge King William and Queen Mary ? A hundred times those Anglican divines who had taken the oaths challenged their more scrupulous brethren to cite a single instance in which the prim- itive Church had refused obedience to a successful usurper ; and a hundred times the challenge was evaded. The non jurors had little to say on this head, except that precedents were of no force when opposed to principles, a proposition which came with but a bad grace from a school which had always professed an WILLIAM AND MART. 399 almost superstitious reverence for the authority of the Fathers.* To precedents drawn from later and more corrupt times little respect was due. But, even in the history of later and more corrupt times, the non jurors could not easily find any pre- cedent that could serve their pin-pose. In our own country many Kings, who had not the hereditary right, had filled the throne : but it had never been thought inconsistent with the duty of a Christian to be a true liegeman to such Kings. The usurpation of Henry the Fourth, the more odious usurpation of Richard the Third, had produced no schism in the Church. As soon as the usurper was firm in his seat, Bishops had done homage to him for their domains : Convocations had presented addresses to him, and granted him supplies ; nor had any casuist ever pronounced that such submission to a prince in possession was deadly sin.f With the practice of the whole Christian world the authorita- tive teaching of the Church of England appeared to be in strict h irmony. The Homily on Wilful Rebellion, a di course which in- culcates, in unmeasured terms, the duty of obeying rulers, speaks * See the Answer of a Nonjuror to the Bishop of Sarum's challenge in the Appendix to the Life of Kettlevvell. Among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library is a paper which, sis Bancroft thought it worth preserving, I venture to quote. The writer, a strong nonjuror, after trying to evade, by many pitiable shifts, the argument drawn by a more co npliant divine from the practice of the primitive Church, proceeds thus : " Suppose the primitive Christians all along, from the time of the very Apostles, had been as regardless of their oaths by former princes as he suggests, will he therefore say that their practice is to be a rule? Ill things have been done, and very generally abetted, by men of other- wise very orthodox principles." The argument from the practice of the primi- tive Christians is very strongly put in a tract entitled The Doctrine of Nonresist- ance or Passive Obedience No Way concerned in the Controversies now depend- ing between the Williamites and the Jacobites, by a Lay Gentleman, of the Communion qf the Church of England, as by Law established, 1689. The author of this tract was Edmund Bohun, whom I shall have occasion to mention here- after. t One of the most adulatory addresses ever voted by a Convocation was to Richard the Third. It will be found in Wilkins's Concilia. Dryden, in his line rifacimento of one of the linest passages in the Prologue to the Canterbury Tales, represents the Good Parson as choosing to resign his benefice rather than ac- knowledge the Duke of Lancaster to be King of England. For this representa- tion no warrant can be found in Chaucer's Poem, or anywhere else. Dryden wished to write something that would gall the clergy who had taken the oaths, and therefore attributed to a Roman Catholic priest of the fourteenth century a superstition which originated among the Anglican priests of the seventeenth century. 400 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. of none but actual rulers. Nay, the people are distinctly told in that Homily that they are bound to obey, not only their legitimate prince, but any usurper whom God shall in anger set over them for their sins. And surely it would be the height of absurdity to say that we must accept submissively such usurpers as God sends in anger but most pertinaciously withhold our obedience from usurpers whom He sends in mercy. Grant that it was a crime to invite the Prince of Orange over, a crime to join him, a crime to make him King ; yet what was the whole history of the Jewish nation and of the Christian Church but a record of cases in which Providence had brought good out of evil ? And what theologian would assert that, in such cases, we ought, from abhorrence of the evil, to reject the good ? On these grounds a large body of divines, still reasserting the doctrine that to resist the Sovereign must always be sinful, con- ceived that William was now the Sovereign whom it would be sinful to resist. To these arguments the nonjurors replied that Saint Paul must have meant by the powers that be the rightful powers that be ; and that to put any other interpretation on his words would be to outrage common sense, to dishonour religion, to give scandal to weak believers, to give an occasion of triumph to scoffers. The feelings of all mankind must be shocked by the proposition that, as soon as a King, however clear his title, how- ever wise and good his administration, is expelled by traitors, all his servants arc bound to abandon him, and to range them- selves on the side of his enemies. In all ages and nations, fidelity to a good cause in adversity had been regarded as a virtue. In all ages and nations, the politician whose practice was always to be on the side which was uppermost had been despised. This new Toryism was worse than Whiggism. To break through the ties of allegiance because the Sovereign was a tyrant was doubtless a very great sin : but it was a sin for which specious names and pretexts might be found, and into which a brave and generous man, not instructed in divine truth and guarded by divine grace, might easily fall. But to break through the ties of allegiance merely because the Sovereign was unfortu- WILLIAM AND MARY. 401 nate was not only wicked, but dirty. Could any unbeliever offer a greater insult to the Scriptures than by asserting that the Scriptures had enjoined on Christians as a sacred duty what the light of nature had taught heathens to regard as the last excess of baseness ? In the Scriptures was to be found the his- tory of a King of Israel, driven from his palace by an unnatural son, and compelled to fly beyond Jordan. David, like James, had the right : Absalom, like William, had the possession. Would any student of the sacred writings dare to affirm that the conduct of Shimei on that occasion was proposed as a pattern to be imitated, and that Barzillai, who loyally adhered to his fugi- tive master, was resisting the ordinance of God, and receiving to himself damnation ? Would any true son of the Church of England seriously maintain that a man who was a strenuous royalist till after the battle of Naseby, who then went over to the Parliament, who, as soon as the Parliament had been purged became an obsequious servant of the Rump, and who, as soon as the Rump had been ejected, professed himself a faithful sub- ject of the Protector, was more deserving of the respect of Christian men than the stout old Cavalier who bore true fealty to Charles the First in prison and to Charles the Second in exile, and who was ready to put lands, liberty, life, in peril, rather than acknowledge, by word or act, the authority of any of the upstart governments which, during that evil time, obtained possession of a power not legitimately theirs ? And what dis- tinction was there between that case and the case which had now arisen ? That Cromwell had actually enjoyed, as much power as William, nay much more power than William, was quite cer- tain. That the power of William, as well as the power of Cromwell, had an illegitimate origin every divine who held the doctrine of nonresistance would admit. How then was it pos- sible for such a divine to deny that <. b 'dience had been due to Cromwell and yet to affirm that it was due to William ? To suppose that there could be such inconsistency without dishones- ty would be, not charity, but weakness. Those who were de- termined to comply with the Act of Parliament would do better to speak out, and to say, what everybody knew, that they com- VOL. III. 26 * 402 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. plied simply to save their benefices. The motive was no doubt strong. That a clergyman who was a husband and a father should look forward with dread to the first of August and the first of February was natural. But he would do well to remem- ber that, however terrible might be the day of suspension and the day of deprivation, there would assuredly come two other days more terrible still, the day of death and the day of judgment.* The swearing clergy, as they were called, were riot a little perplexed by this reasoning. Nothing embarrassed them more than the analogy which the nonjurors were never weary of pointing out between the usurpation of Cromwell and the usurpa- tion of William. For there was in that age no High Churchman who would not have thought himself reduced to an absurdity, if he had heen reduced to the necessity of saying that the Church had commanded her sons to obey Cromwell. And yet it was impossible to prove that William wa3 more fully in possession of supreme power than Cromwell had been. The swearers therefore avoided coming to close quarters with the nonjurors on this point, as carefully as the nonjurors avoided coming to close quarters with the swearers on the question touching the practice of the primitive Church. The truth is that the theory of government which had long been taught by the clergy was so absurd that it could lead to nothing but absurdity. Whether the priest who adhered to that theory swore or refused to swear, he was alike unable to give a rational explanation of his conduct. If he swore, he could vin- dicate his swearing only by laying down propositions against which every honest heart instinctively revolts, only by proclaim- ing that Christ had commanded the Church to desert the righte- ous cause as soon as that cause ceased to prosper, and to strength- en the hands of successful villany against afflicted virtue. And yet, strong as were the objections to this doctrine, the objections to the doctrine of the non juror were, if possible, stronger still. According to him, a Christian nation ought always to be in a * See the Defence of the Profession which the Right Reverend Father in God John Lake, Lord Bishop of Chichester, made upon his Deathbed concerning Passive Obedience and the New Oaths, 1690. WILLIAM AND MART. 403 state of slavery or in a state of anarchy. Something is to be said for the man who sacrifices liberty to preserve order. Some- thing is to be said for the man who sacrifices order to preserve liberty. For liberty and order are two of the greatest blessings which a society can enjoy ; and, when unfortunately they ap- pear to be incompatible, much indulgence is due to those who take either side. But the nonjuror sacrificed, not liberty to order, not order to liberty, but both liberty and order to a super- stition as stupid and degrading as the Egyptian worship of cats and onions. While a particular person, differing from other persons by the niere accident of birth, was on the throne, though he might be a Nero, there was to be no insubordination. When any other person was on the throne, though he might be ah Alfred, there was to be no obedience. It mattered not how frantic and wicked might be the administration of the dynasty which had the hereditary title, or how wise and virtuous might be the administration of a government sprung from a revolution. Nor could any time of limitation be pleaded against the claim of the expelled family. The lapse of years, the lapse of ages, made .no change. To the end of the world, Christians were to O * regulate their political conduct simply according to the pedigree of their ruler. The year 1800, the year 1900, might find princes who derived their title from the votes of the Convention reign- ing iu peace and prosperity. No matter : they would still be usurpers ; and, if, in the twentieth or twenty-first century, any person who could make out a better right by blood to the crown should call on a late posterity to acknowledge him as King, the call must be obeyed on peril of eternal perdition. A Whig might well enjoy the thought that the controversies which had arisen among his adversaries had established the soundness of his own political creed. The disputants who had long agreed hi accusing him of an impious error had now effect- ually vindicated him, and refuted one another. The High Church- man who took the oaths had shown by irrefragable arguments from the Gospels and the Epistles, from the uniform practice of the primitive Church, and from the explicit declarations of the Anglican Church, that Christians were not in all cases bound to 404 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. pay obedience to the prince who had the hereditary title. The High Churchman who would not take the oaths had bhown as satisfactorily that Christians were not in all cases bound to pay obedience to the prince who was actually reigning. It followed that, to entitle a government to the allegiance of subjects, some- thing was necessary different from mere legitimacy, -and different also from mere possession. What that something was the Whigs had no difficulty in pronouncing. In their view, the end for which all governments had been instituted was the happiness of society. While the magistrate was, on the whole, notwithstand- ing some faults, a minister for good, Reason taught mankind to obey him ; and Religion, giving her solemn sanction to the teach- ing of Reason, commanded mankind to revere him as divinely commissioned. But if he proved to be a minister for evil, on what grounds was he to be considered as divinely commissioned? The Tories who swore had proved that he ought not to be so considered on account of the origin of his power : the Tories who would rot swear had proved as clearly that he ought not to be so considered on account of the existence of his power. Some violent and acrimonious Whigs triumphed ostenta- tiously and with merciless insolence over the perplexed and di- vided priesthood. The nonjuror they generally affected to re- gard with contemptuous pity as a dull and perverse, but sincere, bigot, whose absurd practice was in harmony with his absurd theory, and who might plead, in excuse for the infatuation which impelled him to ruin his country, that the same infatuation had impelled him to ruin' himself. They reserved the sharpest taunts for those divines who, having, in the days of the Exclu- sion Bill and the Rye House plot, been distinguished by zeal for the divino and indefeasible right of the hereditary Sover- eign, were now ready to swear fealty to an usurper. Was this then the real sense of all those sublime phrases .which had re- sounded during twenty nine years from innumerable pulpits ? Had the thousands of clergymen, who had so loudly boasted of the unchangeable loyalty of their order, really meant only that their loyalty would remain unchangeable till the next change of fortune ? It was idle, it was impudent in them to pretend that WILLIAM AND MARY. 40o their present conduct was consistent with their former language. If any Reverend Doctor had at length been convinced that he l:ad been iu the wrong, he surely ought, by an open recantation to make all the amends now possible to the persecuted, the cal- umniated, the murdered defenders of liberty. If he was still convinced that his old opinions were sound, he ought manfully to cast in his lot with the nonjuror. Respect, it was said, is due to him who ingenuously confesses an error : respect is due to him who courageously suffers for an error : but it is difficult to respect a minister of religion, who, while asserting that he still adheres to the principles of the Tories, saves a benefice by tak- ing an oath which can be honestly taken, only 011 the principles of the Whigs. These reproaches, though perhaps not altogether unjust, were unseasonable. The wiser and more moderate Whigs, sensi- ble that the throne of William could not stand firm if it had not a wider basis than their own party, abstained at this con- juncture from sneers and invectives, and exerted themselves to remove the scruples and to soothe the irritated feelings of the clergy. The collective power of the rectors and vicars of Eng- land was immense ; and it was much better that they should swear for the most flimsy reason which could be devised by a sophist than that they should not swear at all. It soon became clear that the arguments for swearing, backed as they were by some of the strongest motives which can influence the human mind, had prevailed. Above twenty-nine thirtieths of the profession submitted to the law. Most of the divines of the capital, who then formed a separate class, and who were as much distinguished from the rural clergy by liberality of sentiment as by eloquence and learning, gave in their adhesion to the government early, and with every sign of cordial attach- ment. Eighty of them repaired together, in full term, to West- minster Hall, and were there sworn. The ceremony occupied so long a time, that little else was done that day in the Courts of Chancery and King's Bench.* But in general the compliance * London Gazette, June 30, 1C89 ; Luttrell's Diary. "The eminentest men," says Lwt! veil. 406 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. was tardy, sad, and sullen. Many, no doubt, deliberately violated what they believed to be their duty. Conscience told them that they were committing a sin. But they had not fortitude to resign the parsonage, the garden, the glebe, and to go forth with- out knowing where to find a meal or a roof for themselves and their little ones. Many swore with doubts and misgivings.* Some declared, at the moment of taking the oath, that they did not mean to promise that they would not submit to James, if he should ever be in a condition to demand their allegiance.f Some clergymen in the North were, on the first of August, going in a company to swear, when they were met on the road by the news of the battle which had been fought, four days before, in the pass of Killiecrankie. They immediately turned back, and did not again leave their homes on the same errand till it was clear that Dundee's victory had made no change in the state of public affairs $ Even of those whose understandings were fully con- vinced that obedience was due to the existing government, very few kissed the book with the heartiness with which they had formerly plighted their faith to Charles and James. Still the thing was done. Ten thousand clergymen had solemnly called heaven to attest their promise that they would be true liegemen to William ; and this promise, though it by no means warranted him in expecting that they would strenuously support him, had at least deprived them of a great part of their power to injure him. They could not, without entirely forfeiting that public respect on which their influence depended, attack, except in an indirect and timidly cautious manner, the throne of one whom they had, in the presence of God, vowed to obey as their King. Some of them, it is true, affected to read the prayers for the new Sovereigns iu a peculiar tone which could not be misunderstood. Others were guilty .of still grosser indecency. Thus, one wretch, just after praying for William and Mary in the most solemn * See in Kettlewell's Life, iii. 72, the retractation drawn by him for a clergy- man who had taken the oath?, and who afterwards repented of having done so. t SCR the account of Dr. Dove's conduct in Clarendon's Diary, and the account of Dr. Marsh's conduct in the Life of Kettlewell. t The Anatomy of a Jacobite Tory, 1690. Dialogue between a Whig and a Tory. WILLIAM AND MARY. 407 office of religion took off a glass to their damnation, Another, after performing divine service on a fast day appointed by their authority, dined on a pigeon pie, and while he cut it up, uttered a wish that it was the usurper's heart. But such audacious wickedness was doubtless rare and was injurious rather to the Church than to the government.* Those clergymen and members of the Universities who in- curred the penalties of the law were about four hundred in number. Foremost in rank stood the Primate and six of his suffragans, Turner of Ely, Lloyd of Norwich, Frampton of Gloucester, Lake of Chichester, White of Peterborough, and Ken. of Bath and Wells. Thomas of Worcester would have made a seventh : but he died three weeks before the day of sus- pension. On his deathbed he adjured his clergy to be true to the cause of hereditary right, and declared that those divines who tried to make out that the oaths might be taken without any departure from the loyal doctrines of the Church of Eng- land seemed to him to reason more Jesuitically than the Jesuits themselves.f Ken, who, both in intellectual and in moral qualities, ranked highest among the nonjuring prelates, hesitated long. There were few clergymen who could have submitted to the new gov- ernment with a better grace. For, when nonresistance and passive obedience were the favourite themes of his brethren, he had scarcely ever alluded to politics in the pulpit. He owned that the arguments in favour of swearing were very strong. He went indeed so far as to say that his scruples would be com-' pletely removed, if he could be convinced that James had en- tered into engagements for ceding Ireland to the French King. It is evident therefore that the difference between Ken and the Whigs was not a difference of principle. He thought, with them, that misgovernment, carried to a certain point, justified a trans- fer of allegiance, and doubted only whether the misgovernment of James had been carried quite to that point. Nay, the good Bishop actually began to prepare a pastoral letter explaining his reasons * Luttrell's Diary, November 1691, February 1692. t Life of Kettlewell, iii. 4. 408 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. for taking the oaths. But, before it was finished, he received information which convinced him that Ireland had cot been made over to France : doubts came thick upon him : he threw his unfinished letter into the fire, and implored his less scrupu- lous friends not to urge him further. He was sure, he said, that they had acted uprightly : he was glad that they could do with a clear conscience what he shrank from doing : he felt the force of their reasoning : he was all but persuaded ; and he was afraid to listen longer lest he should be quite persuaded : for, if he should comply, and his misgivings should afterwards return, he should be the most miserable of men. Not for wealth, not fora palace, not for a peerage, would he run the smallest risk of ever feeling the torments of remorse. It is a curious fact that, of the seven nonjuring prelates, the only one whose name carries with it much weight was on the point of swearing, and was prevented from doing so, as he himself acknowledged, not by the force of reason, but by a morbid scrupulosity which he did not advise others to imitate.* Among the priests who refused the oaths were some men eminent in the learned world, as grammarians, chronologists, canonists, and antiquaries, and a very few who were distinguished * See Turner's Letter to Saneroft, dated on Ascension Day, 1689. The original is among the Tanner MSS. in the Bodleian Library. But the letter will be found, with much other curious matter, in the Life of Ken by a Layman, lately pub- lished. See also the Life of Kettlewell, iii. 95 ; and Ken's Letter to Buniet, dated October 5, 1C89, in Hawkins's Life of Ken. " I am sure," Lady Russell wrote to Dr. Fitzwilliam, "4he Bishop of Bath and Wells excited others to com- ply, when he could not bring himself to do so, but rejoiced when others did." Ken declared that he had advised nobody to take the oaths, and that his practice had been to remit those who asked his advice to their own studies and prayers. Lady Russell's assertion and Ken's denial will be found to come nearly to the same thing, when we make those allowances which ought to be made for fii:i- ation and feeling, even in weighing the testimony of the most veracious M it- nesses. Ken. having at last determined to east in his lot with the iiexijurors, naturally tried to vindicate his consistency as far as he honestly could. Lady Russell, wishing to induce her friend to take the oaths, naturally made .is much of Ken's disposition to compliance as she honestly could. She went too far in using the word "excited." On the other hand, it is clear that Ken, by remitting those who consulted him to their own studies and prayers, gave them to under- stand that, in his opinion, the oath was lawful to those who, after a serious enquiry, thought it lawful. If people had asked him whether they might law- fully commit perjury or adultery, he would assuredly have told them, not to con- sider the point maturely and to implore the divine direction, but to abstain on peril of (heir soulg. WILLIAM AND MART. 409 by wit and eloquence ; but scarcely one can be named who was qualified to discuss any large question of morals or politic?, scarcely one whose writings do not indicate either extreme feebleness or extreme flightiness of mind. Those who distrust" the judgment of a Whig on this point will probably allow some weight to the opinion which was expressed, many years after the Revolution, by a philosopher of whom the Tories are justly proud. Johnson, after passing in review the celebrated divines who had thought it sinful to swear allegiance to William the Third a':d George the First, pronounced that, in the whole body of nonjurors, there was one, and one only, who could reason.* The nonjuror in whose favour Johnson made this exception was Charles Leslie. Leslie had, before the Revolution, been Chancellor of the diocese oc Connor in Ireland. He had been forward in opposition to Tyrconnel ; had, as a justice of the peace for Monaghan, refused to acknowledge a papist as Sheriff of that county ; and had been so courageous as to send some officers of the Irish army to prison for marauding. But the doc- trine of nonrasistance, such as it had been taught by Anglican divines in the days of the Rye House Plot, was immovably fixed in his mind. When the state of Ulster became such that a Protestant who remained there could hardly avoid being either a rebel or a martyr, Leslie fled to London. His abilities and his connections were such that he might easily have obtained high preferment in the Church of England. But he took his ' See the converration of June 9. 1784, in Boswell's Life of .Johnson, and the note. Boswell, with his usual absurdity, i^ sure that Johnson could not have recollected ' that the seven bisho;>s. ?o justly celebrated for their magnanimous resistance to arbitrary power, were yet nonjurore." Only five of the seven were nonjurors : and anybody but fioswell would have known that a man may resist a:bitrary power, and yet not be a good reasoner. N.-iy. the resistance v.-hi-k Sancroft and tha other noiijurlng bishops offered to arbitrary power, while they continued to hold the doctrine of nouresistance. i * ths most deci ive proof that they were incapable of reasoning. It must be remembered that they were pre- pared to tike the whole kingly power from James and to bsstow it on William, with the liile ot Kegent. Their scruple was merely about the word King. I am surprised that Johnson should hare pronounced \Viiliain Law no ' ca- soner. I.a\v did indeed fall into great errors ; but they were errors against which logic affords no security. I -i mere dialectical skill he had very few superiors. That he w-is more than once victorious over Hoadlev no cancTd Whi; will dc-t-.y. But Law did not belong to the generation with which I have now to do. 410 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. place in the front rank of the Jacobite body, and remained there steadfastly through all the dangers and vicissitudes of three and thirty troubled years. Though constantly engaged in theological controversy with Deists, Jews, Sociriians, Presbyterians, Papists, and Quakers, he found time to be one of the most voluminous po- litical writers of his age. Of all the nonjuring clergy he was the best qualified to discuss constitutional questions. For, before he had taken orders he had resided long in the Temple, and had been studying English history and law, while most of the other chiefs of the schism had been poring over the Acts of Chalcedon, or seeking for wisdom in the Targum of Onkelos.* In 1689, however, Leslie was almost unknown in England. Among the divines who incurred suspicion on the first of August in that year, the highest in popular estimation was without dis- pute Doctor William Sherlock. Perhaps no simple presbyter of the Church of England has ever possessed a greater authority over his brethren than belonged to Sherlock at the time of the Revolution. He was not of the first rank among his contempo- raries as a scholar, as a preacher, as a writer on theology, or as a writer on politics : but in all the four characters he had distin- guished himself. The perspicuity and liveliness of his style have been praised by Prior and Addison. The facility and assi- duity with which he wrote are sufficiently proved by the bulk and dates of his works. There were indeed among the clergy men of brighter genius and men of wider attainments : but during a long period there was none who more completely represented the order, none who, on all subjects, spoke more precisely the sense of the Anglican priesthood, without any taint of Latitudi- narianism, of Puritanism, or of Popery. He had, in the days of the Exclusion Bill, when the power of the dissenters was very great in Parliament and in the country, written strongly against the sin of nonconformity. When the Rye House Plot was de- tected, he had zealously defended by tongue and pen the doc- trine of nonresistance. His services to the cause of episcopacy and monarchy were so highly valued that he was muHe Master of the Temple. A pension was also bestowed ou him by * Ware's History of the Writers of Ireland, continued by Harris. WILLIAM AND MARY. 411 Charles : but that pension James soon took away : for Sherlock, though he held himself bound to pay passive obedience to the civil power, held himself equally bound to combat religious errors, and was the keenest and most laborious of that host of controversialists who, in the day of peril, manfully defended the Protestant faith. In little more than two years he published sixteen treatises, some of them large books, against the high pretensions of Rome. Not content with the easy victories which he gained over such feeble antagonists as those who were quartered at Clerkenwell and the Savoy, he had the courage to measure his strength with no less a champion than Bossuet, and came out of the conflict without discredit.- Nevertheless Sher- lock still continued to maintain that no oppression could justify Christians in resisting the kingly authority. When the Con- vention was about to meet, he strongly recommended, in a tract which was considered as the manifesto of a large part of the clergy, that James should be invited to return on such conditions as might secure the laws and religion of the nation.* The vote which placed William and Mary on the throne filled Sherlock with sorrow and anger. He is said to have exclaimed that if the Convention was determined on a revolution, the clergy would find forty thousand good Churchmen to effect a restoration.t Against new oaths he gave his opinion plainly and warmly. He professed himself at a loss to understand how any honest man could doubt that, by the powers that be, Saint Paul meant legitimate powers and no others. No name was in 1689 cited by the Jacobites more proudly or more fondly than that of Sherlock. Before the end of 1690 that name excited very different feelings. A few other non jurors ought to be particularly noticed. High among them in rank was George Hickes, dean of Wor- cester. Of all the Englishmen of his time he was the most O versed in the old Teutonic languages ; and his knowledge of the early Christian literature was extensive. As to his capa- city for political discussions, it may be sufficient to say that his * Letter to a member of the Convention, 1689. t Johnson's Notes on the Phoenix Edition of Burnet's Pastoral Letter, 1692. 412 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. favourite argument for passive obedience was drawn from the story of the Theban legion. He was the younger brother of that unfortunate John Hickes who had been found hidden iu the, malthouse of Alice Lisle. James hud, in spite of all solici- tation, put both John Hickes and Alice Lisle to death. Persons who did not know the strength of the Dean's principles thought that he might possibly feel some resentment on this account : for he was of no gentle or forgiving temper, and could retain during many years a bitter remembrance of small injuries. But he was strong in his religious and political faith ; he reflected that the sufferers were dissenters ; and he submitted to the will of the Lord's Anointed not only with patience but with compla- cency. He became indeed a more loving subject than ever from the time when his brother was hanged and his brother's benefactress beheaded. While almost all other clergymen, appalled by the Declaration of Indulgence and by the proceed- ings of the High Com mission, were beginning to think that they had pushed the doctrine of nonresistance a little too far, he was writing a vindication of his darling legend, and trying to convince the troops at Hounslow that, if James should be pleased to massacre them all, as Maximian had massacred the Theban legion, for refusing to commit idolatry, it would be their duty to pile their arms, and meekly to receive the crown of martyrdom. To do Ilickes justice, his whole conduct after the Revolution proved that his servility had sprung neither from fear nor from cupidity, but from mere bigotry.* Jeremy Collier, who was turned out of the preachership of the Rolls, was a man of a much higher order. lie is well entitled to grateful and respectful mention : for to his eloquence and courage is to be chiefly ascribed the purification of our lighter literature from that foul taint which had been contracted during the Antipuritan reaction. He was, in the full force of the words, a good man. He was also a man of eminent abilities, * The best notion of Hickes's character will be formed from his numerous controversial wrilings, particularly his Jovian, written ia It84, his Thebcean Legion no Fable, wri. tea iu 1087, thouih not published till 1714, and his Dis- cour.es upon Dr. Burnet and Dr. Tillotson, 109j. His literary fame rests on works of a very different kind. WILLIAM AND MART. 413 / a great master of sarcasm, a great master of rhetoric.* His reading too, though undigested, was of immense extent. But his mind was narrow : his reasoning, even when he was so fortunate as to have a good cause to defend, was singularly futile and inconclusive ; and his brain was almost turned by pride, not personal, but professional. In his view, a priest was the highest of human beings, except a bishop. Reverence and submission were due from the best and greatest of the laity to the least respectable of the clergy- However ridiculous a man in holy orders might make himself, it was impiety to laugh at him. So nervously sensitive im'eed was Collier on this point that lie thought it profane to throw any reflection even on the ministers of false religions. He laid it down as a rule that Muftis and Augurs ooght always to be mentioned with respect. He blamed Dryden for sneering at tUe Hierophants of Apis. He praised Racine for giving dignity to the character of a priest of Baal. He praised Corneille for not bringing that learned and reverend divine 'liresias on the stage in the tragedy of CEdipus. The omission. Collier owned, spoiled the dramatic effect of the piece : but the holy function was much too solemn to be played with. Nay, incredible as it may seem, he thought it improper in the laity to sneer even at Presbyterian preachers. Indeed his Jacobitism was little more than one of the forms in which his zeal for the dignity of his profession manifested itself. He abhorred the Revolution less as a rising up of subjects against their King than as a rising up of the laity against the sacerdotal caste. The doctrines which had been proclaimed from the pulpit during thirty years had been treated with contempt by the Convention. A new government had been set up in oppo- sition to the wishes of the spiritual peers in the House of Lords and of tho priesthood throughout the country. A secular assembly had taken upon itself to pass a law requiring arch- bishops and bishops, rectors and vicars, to -abjure, on pain of deprivation, what they had been teaching all their lives. * Colliar's Tracts o-i the Stage are. on the whole, his Iwjst piere=s. But tli-^rt 13 much that is striking in his politic al pamphlets. His " Peisrasive to < o i*id- eration, tendered to the Royalists, particularly those of theCburcli of Ei)glaiid," eeuu to uiJ one of the be.it productions of the Jacobite press. 414 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Whatever meaner spirits might do, Collier was determined not to be led in triumph by the victorious enemies of his order. To the last he would confront, with the authoritative port of an ambassador of heaven, the anger of the powers and principalities of the earth. In parts Collier was the first man among the nonjurors. In erudition the first place must be assigned to Henry Dodwell, who, for the unpardonable crime of having a small estate in Mayo, had been attainted by the Popish Parliament at Dublin. He was Camdenian Professor of Ancient History in the Univer- sity of Oxford, and had already acquired considerable celebrity by chronological and geographical researches ; but though he never could be persuaded to take orders, theology was his favourite study. He was doubtless a pious and sincere man. He had perused innumerable volumes in various languages, and had indeed acquired more learning than his slender faculties were able to bear. The small intellectual spark which he possessed was put out by the fuel. Some of his books seem to have been written in a madhouse, and, though filled with proofs of his immense reading, degrade him to the level of James Naylor an,d Ludowick Muggleton. He began a dissertation intended to prove that the law of nations was a divine revelation made to the family which was preserved in the ark. He published a trea- tise in which he maintained that a marriage between a member of the Church of England and a Dissenter was a nullity, and that the couple were in the sight of heaven guilty of adultery. He defended the use of instrumental music in public worship on the ground that the notes of the organ had a power to counteract the influence of devils on the spinal marrow of human beings. In his treatise on this subject he remarked that there was high authority for the opinion that the spinal marrow, when decom- posed, became a serpent. Whether this opinion were or were not correct, he thought it unnecessary to decide. Perhaps, he said, the eminent men in whose works it was found had meant only to express figuratively the great truth, that the Old Serpent operates on us chiefly through the spinal marrow.* Dodwell's * See Brokesby's Life of Dodwell. The Discourse against Marriages iii cllf- WILLIAM AND MART. 415 speculations on the state of human beings after death are, if pos- sible, more extraordinary still. He tells us that our souls are naturally mortal. Annihilation is the fate of the greater part of mankind, of heathens, of Mahometans, of unchristened babes. The gift of immortality is conveyed in the sacrament of bap- tism : but to the efficacy of the sacrament it is absolutely neces- sary that the water be poured, and the words pronounced by a minister who has been ordained by a bishop. In the natural course of things, therefore, all Presbyterians, Independents, Bap- tists, and Quakers would, like the inferior animals, cease to exist. But Dodwell was far too good a churchman to let off dissenters so easily. He informs them that, as they have had an oppor- tunity of hearing the Gospel preached, and might, but for their own perverseness, have received episcopalian baptism, God will, by a preternatural act of power, bestow immortality on them in order that they may be tormented for ever and ever.* No man abhorred the growing latitudinarianism of those times more than Dodwell. Yet no man had more reason to re- joice in it. For, in the earlier part of the seventeenth century, a speculator who had dared to affirm that the human soul is by its nature mortal, and does, in the great majority of cases, actu- ally die with the body, would have been burned alive in Smith- field. Even in days which Dodwell could well remember, such heretics as himself would have been thought fortunate if they escaped with life, their backs flayed, their ears clipped, their noses slit, their tongues bored through with red hot iron, and ferent Communions is known to me. I ought to say, only from Brokesby's copi- ous abstract. That Discourse is very rare. It was originally printed as an ap- pendage to a sermon preached by Leslie. When Leslie collected his works he omitted the discourse, probably because he was ashamed of it. I have not be^n able to lh;d it in the Library of the British Museum. The Treatise on the Law- fulness of Instrumental Music I have read ; and incredibly absurd it is. * Dodwell tells us that the title of the work in which he fiist promulgated this theory was framed with great care and precision. I will therefore transcribe the title page. " An Epistolary Discourse proving from Scripture and the Fivst Fathers that the Soul is naturally Mortal, but Immortalized actually by the Pleasure of God to Punishment or to Kewnrd, by its Union with the Divine Bap- tismal Spirit, wherein is proved that none have the Power of giving this Divine Immortalizing Spirit since the Apostles but only the Bishops. By II. Dodwell." Dr. Clarke, in a Letter to Dodwell (1706), says that this Epistolary Discourse ia " a book at which all good men are sorry, and all profane meii rejoice." 416 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. their eyes knocked out with brickbats. With the nonjurors, however, the author of this theory was still the great Mr. Dod- well ; and some, who thought it culpable lenity to tolerate a Presbyterian meeting, thought it at the same time gross illiber- ality to blame a learned and pious Jacobite for denying a doc- trine so utterly unimportant in a religious point of view as that of the immortality of the soul.*. Two other nonjurors deserve special mention, less on ac- count of their abilities and learning, than on account of their r.ire integrity, and of their not less rare candour. These were John Kettlewell, Rector of Coleshill, and John Fitzwilliam, Canon of Windsor. It is remarkable that both these men had seen much of Lord Russell, and that both, though differing from him in political opinions, and strongly disapproving the part which he had taken in the Whig plot, had thought highly of his character, and had been sincere mourners for his death. He had sent to Kettlewell an affectionate message from the scaffold in Lincoln's Inn Fields. Lady Russell, to her latest day, loved, trusted, and revered Fitzwilliam, \vho, - when she was a girl, had baen the friend of her father, the virtuous Southampton. The two clergymen agreed in refusing to swear : but they, from that moment, took different paths. Kettlewell was one of the most active members of his party : he declined no drudgery in the common cause, provided only that it were such drudgery as did not misbecome an honest man ; and he defended his opinions in several tracts, winch give a much higher notion of his sincerity than of his judgment or acuteness.f Fitzwilliam thought that he had done enough in quitting his pleasant dwelling and garden under the shndow of Saint George's Chapel, and in betaking himself with his books to a small lodging in an attic. lie could not with a safe conscience acknowledge William and Mary : but he did. not conceive that he was bound to be always stirring up sedition against them ; and he passed the last years of his life, under the powerful protection of the House of Bedford, in iu- Eocent and studious repose. $ * See Leslie's Rehear ala, No. ?6, 2S7. t See h's works, and the Vighly curious life of him which was compiled from the papers of his friends Ilickes and Nelson. J See Fitzwilliam's correspondence with Lady Kussell, and his evidence on WILLIAM AND MARY. 417 Among the less distinguished divines who forfeited their benefices, were doubtless many good men. : but it is certain that the moral character of the non jurors, as a class, did not stand high. It seems hard to impute laxity of principle to persons who undoubtedly made a great sacrifice to principle. And yet experience abundantly proves that many who are capable of making a great sacrifice, when their blood is heated by conflict, and wlfeii the public eye is fixed upon them, are not capable of persevering long in the daily practice of obscure virtues. It is by no means improbable that zealots may have given their lives for a religion which had never effectually restrained their vindictive or their licentious passions. We learn indeed from fathers of the highest authority that, even in the purest ages of the Church, some confessors, who had manfully refused to save themselves from torments and death by throwing frankincense on the altar of Jupiter, afterwards brought scandal on the Christian name by gross fraud and debauchery.* For the non- juring divines great allowance must in fairness be made. They were doubtless in a most trying situation. In general, a schism, which divides a religious community, divides the laity as well as the clergy. The seceding pastors therefore carry with them a large part of their flocks, and are consequently assured of a maintenance. B.ut the schism of 1689 scarcely extended be- yond the clergy. The law* required the rector to take the oaths, or to quit his living ; but no oath, no acknowledgment of the title of the new King and Queen, was required from the the trial of Ashton, in the State Trials. The only work which Fitzwilliam, as far as I have been able to discover, ever published was a sermon on the Rye House Plot, preached a few weeks after Russell's execution. There are some sentences in this sermon which I a little wonder that the widow and the family forgave. * Cyprian, in one of his Epistles, addresses the confessors thus : "Quosdam audio inttcere nunierum vestrum, et laudem praecipui nominis prava sua couver- B.itione destruere. . Cum quanto nominis vestri pudore delinquitur quando alius aliquis temulentus et lasciviens demoratur ; alius in earn patriam mule extorris est regrediiur, ut deprehensus non jam quasi Christiaiius, sed quasi nocens pereat." He uses still stronger language in the book de Unitate Ec- clesiae : "Neque enim confessio immunem facit ab insidiis diaboli, aut contra tentationes et pericula et incursus atque impetus saeculares adliuc in sseeulo posi- tum perpetua securitate defendit ; cseterura nunquamin confessoribus fraudes et stupra et adulteria postmoduiu videremus, quse nuuc iu quibusdam videutea Iiigeiniscimus et dolemus." VoL.IIL 27. 418 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. parishioner as a qualification for attending divine service, or for receiving the Eucharist. Not one in fifty, therefore, of these laymen who disapproved of the Revolution thought him- self bound to quit his pew in the old church, where the old liturgy was still read, and where the old vestments were still worn, and to follow the ejected priest to a conventicle, a con- venticle, too, which was not protected by the Toleration Act. Thus the new sect was a sect of preachers without hearers ; and such preachers could not make a livelihood by preaching. In London, indeed, and in some other large towns, those vehement Jacobites, whom nothing would satisfy but to hear King James and the Prince of Wales prayed for by name, were sufficiently numerous to make up a few small congregations, which met secretly and under constant fear of the constables, in rooms so mean that the meeting houses of the Puritan dissenters might by comparison be called palaces. Even Collier, who had all the qualities which attract large audiences, was reduced to be the minister of a little knot of maleconten-ts, whose oratory was on a second floor in the city. But the nonjuring clergymen who were able to obtain even a pittance by officiating at such places ware very few. Of the rest some had independent means : some lived by literature : one or two practised physic. Thomas Wagstaffe, for example, who had been Chancellor of Lichfield, had many patients, and made himself conspicuous by always visiting them in full canonicals.* But these were ex- ceptions. Industrious poverty is a state by no means unfa- vourable to virtue : but it is dangerous to be at once poor and idle ; and most of the clergymen who had refused to swear found themselves thrown on the world with nothing to eat and with nothing to do. They naturally became beggars and loun- gers. Considering themselves as martyrs suffering in a public cause, they were not ashamed to ask any good churchman for a guinea. Most of them passed their lives in running about from one Tory coffeehouse to another, abusing the Dutch, hearing * Much curious information about the nonjurors will be found in the Bio- graphical Memoirs of William Bowyer, Printer, which forms the first volume of Nichols's Literary Anecdotes of the eighteenth century. A specimen of Wag- stalfe's prescriptions is in the Bodleian Library. WILLIAM AND MART. 419 and spreading reports that within, a month His Majesty would certainly be on English ground, and wondering who would have Salisbury when Burnet was hanged. During the session of Parliament the lobbies and the Court of Requests were crowded with deprived parsons, asking who was up, and what the num- bers were on the last division. Many of the ejected divines became domesticated, as chaplains, tutors, and spiritual directors, in the houses of opulent Jacobites. In a situation of this kind, a raan of pure and exalted character, such a man as Ken was among the noujurors, and Watts among the nonconformists, may preserve his dignity, and may much more than repay by his example and his Instructions the benefits which he receives. But to a person whose virtue is not high toned this way of life is full of peril. If he is of a quiet disposition, he is in danger of sinking into a servile, sensual, drowsy parasite. If he is of an active and aspiring nature, it may be feared that he will become ex- pert in those bad arts by which more easily than by faithful service, retainers make themselves agreeable or formidable. To discover the weak side of every character, to flatter every pas- sion and prejudice, to sow discord and jealousy where love and confidence ought to exist, to watch the moment of indiscreet openness for the purpose of extracting secrets important to the prosperity and honour of families, such are the practices by which keen and restless spirits have too often avenged them- selves for the humiliation of dependence. The public voice loudly accused many nonjurors of requiting the hospitality of their benefactors with villany as black as that of the hypocrite depicted in the masterpiece of Moliere. Indeed when Gibber iMidertook to adapt that noble comedy to the English stage, he made his Tartuffe a nonjuror : and Johnson, who cannot be supposed to have been prejudiced against the nonjurors, frankly owned that Gibber had done them no wrong.* * Cibber's play, as Gibber wrote it, ceased to be popular when the Jacobites ceased to be formidable, and is now known only to the curious. In 1768, Bicker- staffe altered it into the Hypocrite, and substituted Dr. Cantwell, the Methodist, for Dr. Wolfe, the Nonjuror. " 1 do not think," said Johnson, " the character o the Hypocrite justly applicable to the Methodists ; but it was very applicable to the nonjurors." Boswell asked him if it were true that the nonjuring clergymen intrigued with the wives of their patrons. " I ain afruid," said Johnson, " many 420 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. There can be no doubt that the schism caused by the oaths would have been far more formidable, if, at this crisis, any ex- tensive change had been made in the government or in the ceremonial of the Established Church. It is a highly instructive fact that those enlightened and tolerant divines who most ardently desired such a change saw reason, not long afterwards, to be thankful that their favorite project had failed. Whigs and Tories had in the late Session combined to get rid of Nottingham's Comprehension Bill by voting an address which requested the King to refer the whole subject to the Convocation. Burnet foresaw the effect of this vote. The whole scheme, he said, was utterly ruined.* Many of his friends however, thought differently ; and among these was Tillotson. Of all the members of the Low Church party Tillotson stood highest in general estimation. As a preacher he was thought by his contemporaries to have surpassed all rivals living or dead. Posterity has reversed this judgment. Yet Tillotsou still keeps his place as a legitimate English classic. His highest flights were indeed far below those of Taylor, of Barrow, and of South ; but his oratory was more correct and equable than theirs. No quaint conceits, no pedantic quotations from Talmudists and scholiasts, no mean images, buffoon stories, scurrilous invectives, ever marred the O Affect of his grave and temperate discourses. His reasoning was just sufficiently profound and sufficiently refined to be <>f them did." This conversation took place on the 27th of March, 1775. It was i ict merely in careless talk that Johnson expressed an unfavourable opinion of the nonjurors. In his Life of Fenton. who was a nonjuror, are these remarkable words : " It must be remembered that he kept his name unsullied, and never suffered himself to be reduced, like too many of the snme sect, to mean arts and dishonourable shifts." See the character of a Jacobite, 1690. Even in Kettle- well's Life, compiled from the papers of his friends Hickes and Kelson, will be found admissions which show that, very soon after the schism, some of the non- juring clergy fell into habits of idleness, dependence, and mendicancy, which lowered the character of the whole party. " Several undeserving persons, who are always the most confident, by their going up and down, did much prejudice to the truly deserving, whose modesty would not suffer them to solicit for them- selves Mr. Kettlewell was also very sensible that some of his brethren spent too much of their time in places of concourse and news, by depending for their subsistence upon those whom they there got acquainted with." * Reresby's Memoirs, 344. WILLIAM AND MART. 421 followed by a popular audience with that slight degree of in- tellectual exertion which is a pleasure. His style is not brili liant; but it is pure, transparently clear, and equally free from the levity and from the stiffness which disfigure the sermons of some eminent divines of the seventeenth century. He is always serious : yet there is about his manner a certain graceful ease which marks him as a man who knows the world, who has lived in populous cities and in splendid courts, and who has conversed, not only with books, but with lawyers and merchants, wits and beauties, statesmen and princes. The greatest charm of his compositions, however, is derived from the benignity and candour which appear in every line, and which shone forth not less conspicuously in his life than in his writings. As a theologian, Tillotson was certainly not less latitudi- narian than Burnet. Yet many of those clergymen to whom Burnet was an object of implacable aversion, spoke of Tillot; son with tenderness and respect. It is therefore not strange that the two friends should have formed different estimates of the temper of the priesthood, and should have expected dif- ferent results from the meeting of the Convocation. Tillotson was not displeased with the vote of the Commons. He con- ceived that changes made in religious institutions by mere secu- lar authority might disgust many churchmen, who would yet be perfectly willing to vote, in an ecclesiastical synod, for changes more extensive still ; and his opinion had great weight with the King.* It was resolved that the Convocation should meet at the beginning of the next session of Parliament, and that in the meantime a commission should issue empowering some eminent divines to examine the Liturgy, the canons, and the whole system of jurisprudence administered by the Courts Christian, and to report on the alterations which it might be desirable to make.t Most of the Bishops who had taken the oaths were in this commission ; and with them were joined twenty priests of great note. Of the twenty Tillotson was the most important : * Birch's Life of Tillotson. t See the Discourse concerning the Ecclesiastical Commission, 1689. 422 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. for he was known to speak the sense both of the King and of the Queen. Among those Commissioners who looked up to Tillotson as their chief were Stillingfleet, Dean of St. Paul's, Sharp, Dean of Norwich, Patrick, Dean of Peterborough, Tenison, Rector of Saint Martin's, and Fowler, to whose judicious firmness was. chiefly to be ascribed the determi- nation of the London clergy not to read the Declaration of Indulgence. With such men as those who have been named were min- gled some divines who belonged to the High Church party. Conspicuous among these were two of the rulers of Oxford, Aldrich and Jane. Aldrich had recently been appointed Dean of Christchurch, in the room of the Papist Massey, whom James had, in direct violation of the laws, placed at the head of that great college. The new Dean was a polite, though not a pro- fcund scholar, and a jovial, hospitable gentleman. He was the author of some theological tracts which have long been forgotten and of a compendium of logic which is still used : but the best works which he has bequeathed to posterity are his catches. Jane, the King's Professor of Divinity, was a graver but a less estimable man. He had borne the chief part in framing that decree by which his University ordered the works of Milton and Buchanan to be publicly burned in the schools. A few years later, irritated and alarmed by the persecution of the Bish- ops and by the .confiscation of the revenues of Magdalene Col- lege, he had renounced the doctrine of nonresistance, had re- paired to the head quarters of the Prince of Orange, and had as- sured His Highness that Oxford would willingly coin her plate for the support of the war against her oppressor. During a short time Jane was generally considered as a Whig, and was sharply lampooned by some of his old allies. He was so unfortunate as to have a name which was an excellent mark for the learned punsters of his University. Several epigrams were written on the doublefaced Janus, who, having got a professorship by looking one way, now hoped to get a bishopric by looking another. That he hoped to get a bishopric was perfectly true. He demanded the see of Exeter as a reward WILLIAM AND MART. 423 due to his services. He was refused : the refusal convinced him that the Church had as much to apprehend from Latitu- dinarianism as from Popery ; and he speedily became a Tory again.* Early in October the Commissioners assembled in the Jerusalem Chamber. At their first meeting they determined to propose that, in the public services of the Church, lessons taken from the canonical books of Scripture should be substituted for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha, f At the second meet- ing a strange question was raised by the very last person who ought to have raised it. Sprat, Bishop of Rochester, had, without any scruple, sate, during two years, in the uncons- titutional tribunal which had, in the late reign, oppressed and pillaged the Church of which he was a ruler. But he had now become scrupulous, and was not ashamed, after acting with- out hesitation under King James's commission, to express a doubt whether King William's commission were legal. To a plain understanding the doubt seems to be childish. King William's commission gave power neither to make laws nor to administer laws, but simply to enquire and to report. Even without a royal commission Tillotson, Patrick, and Stillingfleet might, with perfect propriety, have met to discuss the state and pros- pects of the Church, and to consider whether it would or would not be desirable to make some concession to the dissenters. And how could it be a cjime for subjects to do at the request of their Sovereign that which it would have been innocent and laudable to do without any such request ? Sprat, however, was seconded by Jane. There was a sharp altercation ; and Lloyd, Bishop of Saint Asaph, who, with many good qualities, had an irritable temper, was provoked into saying something about spies. Sprat withdrew and came no more. His example was soon followed by Jane and Aldrich.J The Commissioners proceeded to take * Birch's Life of Tillotson ; Life of Prideaux ; Gentleman's Magazine for June and July 1745. t Diary of the Proceedings of the Commissioners taken by Dr. Williams, afterwards Bishop of Chichester, one of the Commissioners, every night after he went home from the several meetings. This most curious Diary was printed by order of the House of Commons in 18&L t Willianis's Diary. 424 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. into consideration the question of the posture at the Eucharist. It.-was determined to recommend that a communicant, who. after conference with his minister, should declare that he could not conscientiously receive the bread and wine kneeling, might receive them sitting. Mew, Bishop of Winchester, an honest man, but illiterate, weak even in his best days, and now fast sinking into dotage, protested against this concession, and with- drew from the assembly. The other members continued to apply themselves vigorously to their task ; and no more secessions took place, though there were great differences of opinion, and though the debates were sometimes warm. The highest churchmen who still remained were Doctor William Beveridge, Archdeacon of Colchester, who many years later became Bishop of Saint Asaph, and Doctor John Scott, the same who had prayed by the deathbed of- Jeffreys. The most active among the Latitu- dinarians appear to have been Burnet, Fowler, and Tenison. The baptismal service was repeatedly discussed. As to matter of form the Commissioners were disposed to be indulgent. They were generally willing to admit infants into the Church without sponsors and without the sign of the cross. But the majority, after much debate, steadily refused to soften down or explain away those words which, to all minds not sophisticated, appear to assert the regenerating virtue of the sacrament.* As to the surplice, the Commisioners determined to recom- mend that a large discretion should be left to the Bishops. Ex- pedients were devised by which a person who had received Presbyterian ordination might, without admitting, either ex- pressly or by implication, the" invalidity of that ordination, become a minister of the Church of England. f The ecclesiastical calendar was carefully revised. The great festivals were retained. But it was not thought desirable that Saint Valentine, Saint Chad, Saint Swithin, Saint Edward King of the West Saxons, Saint Dunstan, and Saint Alphage, should share the honours of Saint John and Saint Paul ; or that the Church should appear to class the ridiculous fable of the discovery of the cross with facts so awfully important as the * Williams's Diary. t Ibid. WILLIAM AND MART. 425 Nativity, the Passion, the Resurrection and the Ascension of her Lord.* The Athanasian Creed caused much perplexity. Most of the Commissioners were equally unwilling to give up the doctrinal clauses and to retain the damnatory clauses. Burnet, Fowler, and Tillotson were desirous to strike this famous symbol out of the Liturgy altogether. Burnet brought forward one argument, which to himself probably did not appear to have much weight, but which was admirably calcu- lated to perplex his opponents, Beveridge and Scott. The Council of Ephesus had always been reverenced by Anglican divines as a synod which had truly represented the whole body of the faithful, and which had been divinely guided in the way of truth. The voice of that Council was the voice of the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Church, not yet corrupted by supersti- tion, or rent asunder by schism. During more than twelve cen- turies the world had not seen an ecclesiastical assembly which had an equal claim to the respect of believers. The Council of Ephesus had, in the plainest terms, and under the most terrible penalties, forbidden Christians to frame or to impose on their brethren any creed other than the creed settled by the Nicene Fathers. It should seem therefore that, if the Council of Ephesus was really under the direction of the Holy Spirit, whoever uses the Athanasian Creed must, in the very act of uttering an anathema against his neighbours, bring down an anathema on his own head.f In spite of the authority of the * See the alterations in the Book of Common Prayer prepared by the Eoyal Commissioners for the revision of the Liturgy in 1689, and printed by order of the House of Commons in 1854. t It is difficult to conceive stronger or clearer language than that used by the Council. TOVTUV roivvv avayvucHevruv, uptGt'v ij ayia <7i>i>oJof, erepav TcicTiv [iridevl e^elvai irpoaqtfpeiv, ij-yovv ovyyi>deiv, if cvvrifievai, Trapa TT/V optatitlaav irapa iui> ayiuv Trartpwv TUV ki> ry Nmasuv cwf'Mlovruv avv d-yi(f) rrt-eiyzarr rovq 6e rofytGJvra? rj ffwriOevai iricriv eTepav, ijyovv irpoKo/ui&iv, f) TrpoaEpeiv role kQ&ovaiv eirurrpeQeiv elg emyvuatv TTJ<; afydeiaf, i] el- 'E//.J7Wcr//oi), 57 f 'Iov6aia/j.vv, if ef aipiaeuf, olaadr/iroroi'v, TOVTOVC, tl [iv fiev i^iffKOTroi T] K^TfpiKol, aMorpiovs elvat rot>f tT rijc e irtGKOTryc;, KOI roi'f Kl.qpiKoi'S TOV K^pov, el Je Aa'iKol elev, a Concil- Ephcs. Actio VI. 426 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Ephesian Fathers, the majority of the Commissioners determined to leave the Athanasian Creed in the Prayer Book : but they proposed to add a rubric drawn up by Stillingfleet, which declared that the damnatory clauses were to be understood to apply only to such as obstinately denied the substance of the Christian Faith. Obstinacy is of the nature of moral pravity, and is not imputable to a candid and modest enquirer who, from some defect or malformation of the intellect, is mistaken as to the comparative weight of opposite arguments or testimonies. Or- thodox believers were therefore permitted to hope that the heretic who had honestly and humbly sought for truth would not be everlastingly punished for having failed to find it.* Tenison was entrusted with the business of examining the Liturgy, and of collecting all those expressions to which objec- tions had been made, either by theological or by literary critics. It was determined to remove some obvious blemishes. And it would have been wise in the Commissioners to stop here. Un- fortunately they determined to rewrite a great part of the Prayer Book. It was a bold undertaking; for in general the style of that volume is such as cannot be improved. The Eng- lish Liturgy indeed gains by being compared even with those fine ancient Liturgies from which it is to a great extent taken. The essential qualities of devotional eloquence, conciseness, majestic simplicity, pathetic earnestness of supplication, sobered by a profound reverence, are common between the translations and the originals. But in the subordinate graces of diction the originals must be allowed to be far inferior to the translations. And the reason is obvious. The technical phraseology of Christianity did not become a part of the Latin language till that language had passed the age of maturity and was sinking into barbarism. But the technical phraseology of Christianity was found in the Anglosaxon and in the Norm-an French, long before the union of those two dialects had produced a third dialect superior to either. The Latin of the Roman Catholic services, therefore, is Latin in the last stage of decay. The Eng- lish of our services is English in all the vigour and suppleness of * Williams's Diary ; Alterations in the Book of Common Prayer. WILLIAM AND MARY. 427 early youth. To the great Latin writers, to Terence and Lucre- tius, to Cicero and Caesar, to Tacitus and Quinctilian, the noblest compositions of Ambrose and Gregory would have seemed to be, not merely bad writing, but senseless gibberish.* The diction of our Book of Common Prayer, on the other hand, has directly or indirectly contributed to form the diction of almost every great English writer, and has extorted the admiration of the most accomplished infidels and of the most accomplished nonconformists, of such men as David Hume and Robert Hall. The style of the Liturgy, however, did not satisfy the Doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber. They voted the Collects too short and too dry ; and Patrick was entrusted with the duty of expanding and ornamenting them. In one respect, at least, the choice seems to have been unexceptionable ; for, if we judge by the way in which Patrick paraphrased the most sublime Hebrew poetry, we shall probably be of opinion that, whether he was or was not qualified to make the collects better, no man that ever lived was more competent to make them longer.f Jt mattered little, however, whether the recommendations of the Commission were good or bad. They were all doomed before they were known. The writs summoning the Convoca- * It is curious to consider how those great mnsters of the Latin tongue who nsed to sup with Maecenas and Pollio would have been perplexed by "Tibi Cherubim et Seraphim incessabili voce proclamant, Sanctus, Sanctus, Sanctus, Itominus Deus Sabaoth ;" or by " Ideo cum angelis et archangelis, cum thronis et dominationibus." t I will give two specimens of Patrick's workmanship. " Ho maketh me," says David, " to lie down in green pastures : he leadeth me beside the still waters." Patrick's version is as follows : "For as a good shepherd leads his ehcep in the violent heat to shady places, where they may lie down and feed (not in parched, hut) in fresh and green pastures, and in the evening leads them (not to mnddy and troubled waters, hut) to pure and quiet streams; so hath he already made a fair and plentiful provision for me, which 1 enjoy in peace wiihout any disturbance." In the Song of Solomon is an exquisitely beautiful verse. " I charge you, O daughters of Jerusalem, if ye find my beloved, that ye tell him that I am sick of lovo." Patrick's version runs thus : " So I turned myself to those of my neigh- bours and familiar acquaintance who were awakened by my cries to come and pee what the matter was ; and conjured them, as they would answer it to God, that, if they met with my beloved, they would let him know What shall I say? What shall I desire you to tell him but that I do not enjoy myself now that I want his company, nor can be well till I recover his love again ? " 428 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tion of the Province of Canterbury had been issued ; and the clergy were everywhere in a state of violent excitement. They had just taken the oaths, and were smarting from the earnest reproofs of nonjurors, from the insolent taunts of Whigs, and often undoubtedly from the stings of remorse. The announce- ment that a Convocation was to sit for the purpose of delibera- ting on a plan of comprehension roused all the strongest pas- sions of the priest who had just complied with the law, and was ill satisfied or half satisfied with himself for complying., He had an opportunity of contributing to defeat a favourite scheme of that government which had exacted from him, under severe penalties, a submission not easily to be reconciled to his conscience or his pride. He had an opportunity of sig- nalising his zeal for that Church whose characteristic doc- trines he had been accused of deserting for lucre. She was now, he conceived, threatened by a danger as great as that of the preceding year. The Latitudinarians of 1689 were not less eager to humble and to ruin her than the Jesuits of 1688 had been. The Toleration Act had done for the Dissenters quite as much as was compatible with her dignity and security ; and nothing more ought to be conceded, not the hem of one of her vestments, not an epithet from the beginning to the end of her Liturgy. All the reproaches which had been thrown on the ecclesiastical commission of James were transferred to the ecclesi- astical commission of William. The two commissions indeed had nothing but the name in common. But the name was associated with illegality and oppression, with the violation of dwellings and the confiscation of freeholds, and was therefore assiduously sounded with no small effect by the tougnes of the spiteful in the ears of the ignorant. The King too, it was said, was not sound. He conformed indeed to the established worship ; but his was a local and occasional conformity. For some ceremonies to which High Churchmen were attached he had a distaste which he was at no pains to conceal. One of his first acts had been to give orders that in his private chapel the service should be said instead of being sung ; and this arrangement, though warranted by the WILLIAM AND MARY. 429 rubric, caused much murmuring.* It was known that he was so profane as to sneer at a practice which had been sanctioned by high ecclesiastical authority, the practice of touching for the scrofula. This ceremony had come down almost unaltered from the darkest of the dark ages to the time of Newton and Locke. The Stuarts frequently dispensed the healing influences in the Banqueting House. The days on which this miracle was to be wrought were fixed at sittings of the Privy Council, and were solemnly notified by the clergy in all the parish churches of the realm. f When the appointed time came, several divines in full canonicals stood round the canopy of state. The surgeon of the royal household introduced the sick. A passage from the sixteenth chapter of the Gospel of Saint Mark was read. When the words, " They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall recover," had been pronounced, thre was a pause ; and one of the sick was brought up to the King. His Majesty stroked the ulcers and swellings, and hung round the patient's neck a white riband to which was fastened a gold coin. The other sufferers were then led up in succession ; and, as each was touched, the chaplain repeated the incantation, " They shall lay their hands on the sick, and they shall re- cover." Then came the epistle, prayers, autiphonies, and a benediction. The service may still be found in the prayer books of the reign of Anne. Indeed it was not till some time after the accession of George the First that the University of Ox- ford ceased to reprint the Office of Healing together with the Liturgy. Theologians of eminent learning, ability, and virtue gave the sanction of their authority to this mummery ; $ and what is stranger still, medical men of high note believed, or af- William's dislike of the Cathedral service is sarcastically noticed by Leslie in the Rehearsal, No 7. See also a Letter from a Member of the Hoiiee of Com- mons to his Friend in the Country. 1689, and Bisset's Modern Fanatic, 1710. t Si!e the Order in Council of Jan 9. 1683. t See Collier's Desertion discussed, 1689. Thomas Carte, who was a disciple, and. at one time, an assistant, of Collier, inserted, so late as the year 1747. in a bulky History of England, an exquisitely absurd note, in which he assured the world that, to his certain knowledge, the Pretender had cured the scrofula, and very gravely inferred that the healing virtue was transmitted by inheritance, and was quite independent of a.iy unction. See Carte's History of England, vol. i page 291. 430 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. fected to believe, in the balsamic virtues of the royal hand. We must suppose that every surgeon who attended Charles the Second was a man of high repute for skill ; and more than one of the surgeons who attended Charles the Second has left us a solemn profession of faith in the King's miraculous power. One of them is not ashamed to tell us that the gift was communica- ted by the unction administered at the coronation ; that the cures were so numerous and sometimes so rapid that they could not be attributed to any natural cause ; that the failures were to be as- cribed to want of faith on the part of the patients ; that Charles once handled a scrofulous Quaker and made him a healthy man and a sound Churchman in a moment ; that, if those who had been healed lost or sold the piece of gold which had been hung round their necks, the ulcers broke forth again, and could be removed only by a second touch and a second talisman. We cannot wonder that, when men of science gravely repeated such nonsense, the vulgar should have believed it. Still less can we wonder that wretches tortured by a disease over which natural remedies had no power should have eagerly drunk in tales of preternatural cures : for nothing is so credulous as misery. The crowds which repaired to the palace on the days of healing were immense. Charles the Second, in the course of his reign, touched near a hundred thousand persons. The number seems to have increased or diminished as the king's popularity rose or fell. During that Tory reaction which followed the dissolu- tion of the Oxford Parliament, the press to get near him was terrific. In 1682, he performed the rite eight thousand five hundred times. In 1G84, the throng was such that six or seven of the sick were trampled to death. James, in one of his pro- gresses, touched eight hundred persons in the choir of the Cathedral of Chester. The expense of the ceremony was little less than ten thousand pounds a year, and would have been much greater but for the vigilance of the royal surgeons, whose business it was to examine the applicants, and to distinguish those who came for the cure from those who came for the gold.* * See the Preface to a Treatise on Wounds, by Richard Wiseman, Sergeant WILLIAM AND MART. 431 William had too much sense to be duped, aud too much hon- esty to bear a part in what he knew to be an imposture. " It is a silly superstition," he exclaimed, when he heard that, at the close of Lent, his palace was besieged by a crowd of the sick : " Give the poor creatures some money, and send them away."* On one single occasion he was importuned into laying his hand on a patient. " God give you better health," he said, " and more sense/' The parents of scrofulous children cried out against his cruelty: bigots lifted up their hands and eyes in horror at his impiety : Jacobites sarcastically praised him for not presuming to arrogate to himself a power which belonged only to legitimate sovereigns ; and even some Whigs thought that he acted unwisely in treating with such marked contempt a superstition which had a strong hold on the vulgar mind : but William was not to be moved, and was accordingly set down by many High Churchmen as either an infidel or a puritan.f The chief cause, however, which at this time made even the most moderate plan of comprehension hateful to the priesthood still remains to be mentioned. What Buruet had foreseen and foretold had come to pass. There was throughout the clerical profession a strong disposition to retaliate on the Presbyterians of England the wrongs of the Episcopalians of Scotland. It could not be denied that even the highest churchmen had, in the summer of 1G88, generally declared themselves willing to give up many things for the sake of union. But it was said, and not without plausibility, that what was passing on the other side Chirurgeon to His Majesty, 1676. But the fullest information on this curious subject will be found in the Charisma Basilicon, by John Browne, Chirurgeon in ordinary to His Majesty, 1684. Sse also the ceremonies used in the Time of King Henry VII. for the Healing of them that be Diseased with the King's Evil, published by His Majesty's Command, 1686 ; Evelyn's Diary, March 28, 1684 ; and Bishop Cartwright's Diary, Aug. 28, 29, and 30, 1687. It is incredible that so large a proportion of the population should have been really scrofulous. No doubt many persons who had slight and transient maladies were brought to the king ; and the recovery 9f these persons kept up the vulgar belief in the efficacy of his touch. * Paris Gazette, April 23. I6R9. t See Whiston's Life of himself. Poor "Whicton, who believed in everything but the Trinity, tells us gravely that the single per.-on whom William touched was cured, notwithstanding His Majesty's want of faith. See also the Athenian Mercury of January 16, 1691. 432 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of the Border proved union on any reasonable terms to be im- possible. With what face, it was asked, can those who will make no concession to us where we are weak, blame us for re- fusing to make any concession to them where we are strong ? We cannot judge correctly of the principles and feelings of a sect from the professions which it makes in a time of feebleness and suffering. If we would know what the Puritan spirit reully is, we must observe the Puritan when he is dominant. He was dominant here in the last generation ; and his little finger was thicker than the loins of the prelates. He drove hundreds of quiet students from their cloisters, and thousands of respectable divines from their parsonages, for the crime of refusing to sign his Covenant. No tenderness was shown to learning, to ge- nius, or to sanctity. Such men as Hall and Sanderson, Chilling- worth and Hammond, were not only plundered but flung into prisons, and exposed to all the rudeness of brutal gaolers. It was made a crime to read fine psalms and prayers bequeathed to the faithful by Ambrose and Chrysostom. At length the na- tion became weary of the reign of the saints. The fallen dy- nasty and the fallen hierarchy were restored. The Puritan was in his turn subjected to disabilities and penalties; and he im- mediately found out that it was barbarous to punish men for entertaining conscientious scruples about a garb, about a cere- mony, about the functions of ecclesiastical officers. His piteous complaints and his arguments in favour of toleration had at length imposed on many well meaning persons. Even zealous churchmen had begun to entertain a hope that the severe disci- pline which he had undergone had made him candid, moderate, charitable. Had this been really so, it would doubtless have been our duty to treat his scruples with extreme tenderness. But, while we were considering what we could do to meet his wishes in England, he had obtained ascendency in Scotland ; and, in an instant, he was all himself again, bigoted, insolent, and cruel. Manses had been sacked ; churches shut up ; prayer books burned ; sacred garments torn ; congregations dispersed by violence ; priests hustled, pelted, pilloried, driven forth, with their wives and babes, to beg or die of hunger. That these out- WILLIAM AND MARY. 433 rages were to be imputed, not to a few lawless marauders, but to the great body of the Presbyterians of Scotland, was evident from the fact that the government had not dared either to inflict punishment on the offenders or to grant relief to the sufferers. Was it not fit then that the Church of England should take wai ning ? Was it reasonable to ask her to mutilate her apos- tolical polity and her beautiful ritual for the purpose of concil- iating those who wanted nothing but power to rabble her as they had rabbled her sister ? Already these men had obtained a boon which they ill deserved, and which they never would have granted. They worshipped God in perfect security. Their meeting houses were as effectually protected as the choirs of our cathedrals. While no episcopal minister could, without putting his life in jeopardy, officiate in Ayrshire or Renfrewshire, a hundred Presbyterian ministers preached unmolested every Sunday in Middlesex. The legislature had, with a generosity perhaps imprudent, granted toleration to the most intolerant of men ; and with toleration it behoved them to be content. Thus several causes conspired to inflame the parochial clergy against the scheme of comprehension. Their temper was such that, if the plan framed in the Jerusalem Chamber had been directly submitted to them, it w u 1 have been rejected by a majority of twenty to one. But in the Convocation their weight bore no proportion to their number. The Convocation has, happily for our country, been so long utterly insignificant that, till a recent period, none but curious students cared to enquire how it was constituted ; and even now many persons, not gen- erally ill informed, imagine it to be a council representing the Church of England. In truth the Convocation so often men- tioned in our ecclesiastical history is merely the synod of the Province of Canterbury, and never had a right to speak in the name of the whole clerical body. The Province of York has also its Convocation : but, till the eighteenth century was far advanced, the Province of York was generally so poor, so rude, and so thinly peopled, that, in political importance, it could hardly be considered as more than a tenth part of the kingdom. The sense of the Southern clergy was therefore popularly con- VOL. III. 28 434 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. sidered as the sense of the whole profession. When the formal concurrence of the Northern clergy was required, it seems to have been given as a matter of course. Indeed the canons passed by the Convocation of Canterbury in 1604 were ratified by James the First, and were ordered to be strictly observed in every part of the kingdom two years before the Convocation of York went through the form of approving them. Since these ecclesiastical councils became mere names, a great change has taken place in the relative position of the two Archbishoprics. In all the ele- ments of power, the region beyond Trent is now at least a third part of England. When in our own time the representative system was adjusted to the altered state of the country, almost all the small boroughs which it was necessary to disfranchise were in the south. Two thirds of the new members given to great provincial towns were given to the north. If therefore any English government should suffer the Convocations, as now constituted, to meet for the despatch of business, two indepen- dent synods would be legislating at the same time for one Church. It is by no means impossible that one assembly might adopt canons which the other might reject, that one assembly might condemn as heretical propositions which the other might hold to be orthodox.* In the seventeenth century no such danger was apprehended. So little indeed was the Convocation of York then considered, that the two Houses of Parliament had, in their address to William, spoken only of one Convocation, which they called the Convocation of the Clergy of the King- dom. The body which they thus not very accurately designated is divided into two Houses. The Upper House is composed of the Bishops of the Province of Canterbury. The Lower House consisted, in 1689, of a hundred and forty-four members. Twenty-two Deans and fifty-four Archdeacons sate there in * In several recent publications tlie apprehension that differences might arise between the Convocation of York and the Convocation of Canterbury has been contemptuously pronounced chimerical. But it is not easy to understand why two independent Convocations should be less likely to differ than two Houses of the same Convocation ; and it is matter of notoriety that, in the reigns of William The Third and Aim*, the two Houses of the Convocation of Canterbury WILLIAM AND -MARY. 435 virtue of their offices. Twenty-four divines sate as proctors for twenty-four chapters. Only forty-four proctors were elected by the eight thousand parish priests of the twenty-two dioceses. These forty-four proctors, however, were almost all of one mind. The elections had in former times been conducted in the most quiet and decorous manner. But on this occasion the can- vassing was eager : the contests were sharp : Clarendon, who had refused to take the oaths, and his brother Rochester, the leader of the party which in the House of Lords had opposed the Comprehension Bill, had gone to Oxford, the head quarters of that party, for the purpose of animating and organising the opposition.* The representatives of the parochial clergy must have been men whose chief distinction was their zeal : for in the whole list can be found not a single illustrious name, and very few names which are now known even to persons well read in ecclesiastical history.f The official members of the Lower House, among whom were many distinguished scholars and preachers, seem to have been not very unequally divided."'' During the summer of 1689 several high spiritual dignities became vacant, and were bestowed on divines who were sitting in the Jerusalem Chamber. It has already been mentioned that Thomas, Bishop of Worcester, died just before the day fixed for taking (he oaths, Lake, Bishop of Chichester lived just long enough to refuse them, and with his last breath declared that he would maintain even at the stake the doctrine of in- defeasible hereditary right. The see of Chichester was filled by Patrick, and that of Worcester by Stillingfleet; and the deanery of Saint Paul's which StilMngfleet quitted was given to Tillotson. That Tillotson was not raised to the episcopal bench excited some surprise. But in truth it was because the govern- ment held his services in the highest estimation that he was suffered to remain a little longer a simple presbyter. The i * Birch's Life of Tillotson ; Life of Prideanx. From Clarendon's Diary, it appears tliat he and Rochester were at Oxford on the 23rd of September. t See the Roll in the Historical Account of the present Convocation, appended to the second edition of Vox Cleri, 1690. The most considerable name that I per- ceive in the list of proctor; chosen by the parochial clergy is that of Dr. John Mill, the editor of the Greek Testament. 436 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. most important office in the Convocation was that of Prolocu- tor of the Lower House: the Prolocutor was to be chosen by the members ; and it was hoped at court that they would choose Tillotson. It had in fact been already determined that he should be the next Archbishop of Canterbury. When he went to kiss hands for his new deanery he warmly thanked the King. "Your Majesty has now set me at ease for the. remainder of my life." "No such thing, Doctor, I assure you," said William. He then plainly intimated that, whenever Bancroft should cease to fill the highest ecclesiastical station, Tillotson would succeed to it. Tillotson stood aghast : for his nature was quiet and unambitious : he was beginning to feel the infirmities of old age ; he cared little for rank or money : the worldly advantages which he most valued were an honest fame and the general good will of mankind : those advantages he already possessed ; and he could not but be aware that, if he became primate, he should incur the bitterest hatred of a power- ful party, and should become a mark for obloquy, from which his gentle and sensitive nature shrank as from the rack or the wheel. William was earnest and resolute. " It is necessary," he said, " for my service ; and I must lay on your conscience the responsibility of refusing me your help." Here the conver- sation ended. It was, indeed, not necessary that the point should be immediately decided ; for several months were still to elapse .before the Archbishopric would be vacant. Tillotson bemoaned himself with unfeigned anxiety and sorrow to Ladj' Russell, whom, of all human beings, he most honoured and trusted.* He hoped, he said, that he was not inclined to shrink from the service of the Church ; but he was convinced that his present line of service was that in which he could be most useful. If he should be forced to accept so high * The letter in which Tillotson informed Lady Russell of the King's inten- tions is printed in Birch's book : but the date is clearly erroneous. Indeed 1 feel assured that parts of two distinct letters have been by some blunder joined together. In one passage Tillotson informs his correspondent that Stillingfleet is made Bishop of "Worcester, and in another that Walker is made Bishop of Derry. Now Stillinrrfleet was consecrated Bishop of Worcester on the 13th. of October, 1689, and Walker was not made Bishop of Derry till June 1690. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 437 and so invidious a post as the primacy, he should soon sink under the load f duties and anxieties too heavy for his strength. His spirits, and with his spirits his abilities, would fail him. He gently complained of Burnet, who loved and admired him with a truly generous heartiness, and who had laboured to persuade both the King and Queen that there was in England only one man fit for the highest ecclesiastical dignity. " The Bishop of Salisbury," said Tillotson, " is one of the best and worst friends that I know." Nothing that was not a secret to Burnet was likely to be long a secret to anybody. It soon began to be whispered about that the King had fixed on Tillotson to fill the place of Sancrof t. The news caused cruel mortification to Compton, who, not un- naturally, conceived that his own claims were unrivalled. Pie had educated the Queen and her sister ; and to the instruction which they had received from him might fairly be ascribed, at least in part, the firmness with which, in spite of the influence of their father, they had adhered to the established religion. Compton was, moreover, the only prelate who, during the late reign, had raised his voice in Parliament against the dispensing power, the only prelate who had been suspended by the High Commission, the only prelate who had signed the invitation to the Prince of Orange, the only prelate who had actually taken arms against Popery and arbitrary power, the only prelate, save one, who had voted against a Regency. Among the ecclesias- tics of the Province of Canterbury who had taken the oaths, he was highest in rank. He had therefore held, during some months, a vicarious primacy ; he had crowned the new Sovereigns ; he had consecrated the new Bishops : he was about to preside in the Convocation. It may be added, that he was the son of an Earl, and that no person of equally high birth then sate, or had ever sate, since the Reformation, on the episcopal bench. That the government should put over his head a priest of his own diocese, who was the son of a Yorkshire clothier, and who was distinguished only by abilities and virtues, was provoking ; and Compton, though by no means a badhearted man, was much crovoked. Perhaps his vexation was increased by the reflection 438 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. that he had, for the sake of those by whom he was thus slighted, done some things which had strained his conscience and sullied his reputation, that he had at one time practised the disingenuous arts of a diplomatist, and at another time given scandal to his brethren by wearing the buffcoat and jackboots of a trooper. He could not accuse Tillotson of inordinate ambition. But, though Tillotson was most unwilling to accept the Archbishopric him- self, he did not use his influence in favour of Compton, but earnestly recommended Stillingfleet as the man fittest to preside over the Church of England. The consequence was that, on the eve of the meeting of Convocation, the Bishop who was to be at the head of the Upper House became the personal enemy of the presbyter whom the government wished to see at the head of the Lower House. This quarrel added new difficulties to difficul- ties which little needed any addition.* It was not till the twentieth of November that the Convoca- tion met for the despatch of business. The place of meeting had, in former times, been Saint Paul's Cathedral. But Saint Paul's Cathedral was slowly rising from its ruins ; and, though the dome already towered high above the hundred steeples of the City, the choir had not yet been opened for public worship. The assembly therefore sate at Westminster.! A table was placed in the beautiful chapel of Henry the Seventh. Compton was in the chair. On his right and left those suffragans of Canterbury who had taken the oaths were ranged in gorgeous vestments of scarlet and miniver. Below the table was assembled the crowd of presbyters. Beveridge preached a Latin sermon, in which he warmly eulogised tho existing system, and yet declared him- self favourable to a moderate reform. Ecclesiastical laws were, he said, of two kinds. Some laws were fundamental and eter- nal : they derived they authority from God ; nor could any reli- gious community abrogate them without ceasing to form a part of the universal Church. Other laws were local and temporary. * Birch's Life of Tillotson. The Account there given of the coldness between Comntori and Tillotson was taken by Birch from the MSS. of Henry Wharton, and is confirmed by many circumstances which are known from other sources of intelligence. t Chamberlayne's State of England, 18th edition. WILLIAM AXD MART. 439 They had been framed by human wisdom, and might be al- tered by human wisdom. They ought not indeed to be altered without grave reasons. But surely, at that moment, such rea- sons were not wanting. To unite a scattered flock in one fold under one shepherd, to remove stumblingblock", from the path of the weak, to reconcile hearts long estranged, to restore spiritual discipline to its primitive vigour, to place the best and purest of Christian societies on a base broad enough to stand against all the attacks of earth and hell, these were objects which might well justify some modification, not of Catholic institutions, but of national or provincial usages.* The Lower House, having heard this discourse, proceeded to appoint a Prolocutor. Sharp, who was probably put forward by the members favourable to a comprehension as one of the highest churchmen among them, proposed Tillotson. Jane, who had refused to act under the Royal Commission, was proposed on the other side. After some animated discussion, Jane was elected by fifty-five votes to twenty -eight.f The Prolocutor was formally presented to the Bishop of London, and made, according to ancient usage, a Latin oration. In this oration the Anglican Church was extolled as the most perfect of all institutions. There was a very intelligible intima- tion that no change whatever in her doctrine, her discipline, or her ritual was required : and the discourse concluded with a most significant sentence. Compton, when a few months before he exhibited himself in the somewhat unclerical character of a colonel of horse, had ordered the colours of his regiment to be embroidered with the wellknown words " Nolumus leges Anglize mutari " ; and with these words Jane closed his peroration. t Still the Low Churchmen did not relinquish all hope. They very wisely determined to begin by proposing to substitute les- sons taken from the canonical books for the lessons taken from the Apocrypha. It should seem that this was a suggestion which, even if there had not been a single dissenter in the king- * Concio ad Svnodum per Gulielmum Beveregium, 1689. t Litttrell's Diary ; Historical Account of the Present Convocation. t Rennet's History, iii. 552. 440 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. dom, might well have been received with favour. For the Church had, in her sixth Article, declared that the canonical books were* and that the Apocryphal books were not, entitled to be called Holy Scriptures, and to be regarded as the rule of faith. Even this reform, however, the High Churchmen were determined to oppose. They asked, in pamphlets which covered the counters of Paternoster Row and Little Britain, why country congrega- tions should be deprived of the pleasure of hearing about the ball of pitch with which Daniel choked the dragon, and about the fish whose liver gave forth such a fume as sent the devil flying from Ecbatana to Egypt. And were there not chapters of the wisdom of the Son of Sirach far more interesting and edifying than the genealogies and muster rolls which made Tip a large part of the Chronicles of the Jewish Kings, and of the narrative of Nehemiah ? No grave divine however would have liked to maintain, in Henry the Seventh's Chapel, that it was impossible to find, in many hundreds of pages dictated by the Holy Spirit, fifty or sixty chapters more edifying than anything which could be extracted from the works of the most respectable uninspired moralist or historian. The leaders of the majority therefore determined to shun a debate in which they must have been re- duced to a disagreeable dilemma. Their plan was, not to reject the recommendations of the Commissioners, but to prevent those recommendations from being discussed ; and with this view a system of tactics was adopted which proved successful. The law, as it had been interpreted during a long course of years, prohibited the Convocation from even deliberating on any ecclesiastical ordinance without a previous warrant from the Crown. Such a warrant, sealed with the great seal, was brought in form to Henry the Seventh's Chapel by Nottingham. He at the same time delivered a message from the King. His Majesty exhorted the assembly to consider calmly and without prejudice the recommendations of the Commission, and declared that he had nothing in view but the honour and advantage of the Pro- testant religion in general, and of the Church of England in particular.* * Historical Account of the Present Convocation, 1689. WILLIAM AND MART. 441 The Bishops speedily agreed on an address of thanks for the royal message, and requested the concurrence of the Lower House. Jane and his adherents raised objection after objection. First they claimed the privilege of presenting a separate address. When they were forced to waive this claim, they refused to agree to any expression which imported that the Church of England had any fellowship with any other Protestant community. Amendments and reasons were sent backward and forward. Con- ferences were held at which Burnet on one side and Jane on the other were the chief speakers. At last, with great difficulty, a compromise was made ; and an address, cold and ungracious compared with that which the Bishops had framed, was presented to the King in the Banqueting House. He dissembled his vexa- tion, returned a kind answer, and intimated a hope that the assembly would now at length proceed to consider the great question of Comprehension.* Such however was not the intention of the leaders of the Lower House. As soon as they were again in Henry the Sev- enth's Chapel, one of them raised a debate about the nonjuring Bishops. In spite of the unfortunate scruple which those pre- lates entertained, they were learned and holy men. Their advice might, at this conjuncture, be of the greatest service to the Church. The Upper House was hardly an Upper House in the absence of the Primate and of many of his most respect- able suffragans. Could nothing be done to remedy this evil ? f Another member complained of some pamphlets which had lately appeared, and in which the Convocation was not treated with proper deference. The assembly took fire. Was it not monstrous that this heretical and schismatical trash should be cried by the hawkers about the streets, and should be exposed to sale in the booths of Westminster Hall, within a hundred yards of the Prolocutor's chair ? The work of mutilating the Liturgy and of turning cathedrals into conventicles might surely be postponed till the Synod had taken measures to protect its own * Historical Account of the Present Convocation ; Bnruet, ii. 58 ; Kennet'* History of the Reign of William and Mary. t Historical Account of the Present Convocation ; Rennet's History. 442 BISTORT OP ENGLAND. freedom and dignity. It was then debated how the printing of such scandalous books should be prevented. - Some were for indictments, some for ecclesiastical censures.* In such deliber- ations as these week after week passed away. Not a single proposition tending to a Comprehension had been even dis- cussed. Christmas was approaching. At Christmas there was to be a recess. The Bishops were desirous that, during the recess, a committee should sit to prepare business. The Lower House refused to consent.f That House, it was now evident, was fully determined not even to enter on the consideration of any part of the plan which had been framed by the Royal Commis- sioners. The proctors of the dioceses were in a worse humour than when they first came up to Westminster. Many of them had probably never before passed a week in the capital, and had not been aware how great the difference was between a town divine and a country divine. The sight of the luxuries and comforts enjoyed by the popular preachers of the city raised, not unnaturally, some sore feeling in a Lincolnshire or Caernar- vonshire vicar who was accustomed to live as hardly as a small farmer. The very circumstance that the London clergy were generally for a comprehension made the representative's of the rural clergy obstinate on the other side.J The prelates were, as a body, sincerely desirous that some concession might be made to the nonconformists. But the prelates were utterly unable to curb the mutinous democracy. They were few in number. Some of them were objects of extreme dislike to the parochial clergy. The President had not the full authority of a primate ; nor was he sorry to see those who had, as he conceived, used * Historical Account of the Present Convocation ; Kennet. t Historical Account of the Present Convocation. t That there was such a jealousy as I have described is admitted in the pam- phlet entitled Vox Cleri. " Some country ministers, now of the Convocation, do now see in what great ease and plenty the City ministers live, who have their readers and lecturers, and frequent supplies, and sometimes tarry in the vestry till prayers be ended, and have great dignities in the Church, beside their rich parishes in the City." The author of this tract, once widely celebrated, was Thomas Long, proctor for the clergy of the diocese of Exeter. In another pam- phlet, published at this time, the rural clergymen are said to have seen with an evil eye their London brethren refreshing themselves with sack after preaching. Several satirical allusions to the fable of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse will be found in the pamphlets of that winter. WILLIAM AND MART. 443 him ill, thwarted and mortified. It was necessary to yield. The Convocation was prorogued for six weeks. When those six weeks had expired, it was prorogued again ; and many years elapsed before it was permitted to transact business. So ended, and for ever, the hope that the Church of Eng- land might be induced to make some concession to the scruples of the nonconformists. A learned and respectable minority of the clerical order relinquished that hope with deep regret. Yet in a very short time even Burnet and Tillotson found reason to believe that their defeat was really an escape, and that victory would have been a disaster. A reform, such as, in the days of Elizabeth, would have united the great body of English Pro- testants, would, in the days of William, have alienated more hearts than it would have conciliated. The schism which the oaths had produced was, as yet, insignificant. Innovations such as those proposed by the Royal Commissioners would have given it a terrible importance. As yet a layman, though he might think the proceedings of the Convention unjustifiable, and though he might applaud the virtue of the nonjuring clergy, still continued to sit under the accustomed pulpit, and to kneel at the accustomed altar. But if, just at this conjuncture, while his mind was irritated by what he thought the wrong done to his favourite divines, and while he was perhaps doubting whether he ought not to follow them, his ears and eyes had been shocked by changes in the worship to which he was fondly attached, if the compositions of the doctors of the Jerusalem Chamber had taken the place of the old collects, if he had seen clergymen without surplices carrying the chalice and the paten up and down the aisle to seated communicants, the tie which bound him to the Established Church would have been dissolved. He would have repaired to some nonjuring assembly, where the service which he loved was performed without mutilation. The new sect, which as yet consisted almost exclusively of priests, would soon have been swelled by numerous and large congre- gations : and in those congregations would have been found a much greater proportion of the opulent, of the highly descended, and of the highly educated, than any other body of dissenters 444 HISTOKY OF ENGLAND. could show. The episcopal schismatics, thus remrorced, would probably have been as formidable to the new King and his suc- cessors as ever the Puritan schismatics had been to the princes of the House of Stuart. It is an indisputable and a most instructive fact, that we are, in a great measure, indebted for the civil and religious liberty which we enjoy to the pertina- city with which the High Church party, in the Convocation of 1680, refused even to deliberate on any plan of Compre- hension.* * Burnet, ii. 33, .34. The best narratives of what passed in this Convocation are the Historical Account appended to the second edition of Vox Cleri; and the passage in Kennet's History to which I have already referred the reader. The former narrative is by a very high churchman, the latter by a very low church- man. Those who are desirous of obtaining fuller information must consult the contemporary pamphlets. Among them are Vox Populi ; Vox Laici ; Vox liegis et Regni ; the Healing attempt ; the Letter to a Friend, by Dean Prideaux ; the Letter from a Minister in the Country to a Member of the Convocation ; the Answer to the Merry Answer to Vox Cleri ; the Remarks from the Country upon two Letters relating to the Convocation ; the Vindication of the Letters in an- swer to Vox Cleri ; the Answer to the Country Minister's Letter, All these tracts appeared late m 1689 or early in 1690. WILLIAM AND MART. 445 CHAPTER XV. WHILE the Convocation was wrangling on one side of Old Palace Yard, the Parliament was wrangling even more fiercely on the other. The Houses, which had separated on the twen- tieth of August, had met again on the nineteenth of October. On the day of meeting an important change struck every eye. Halifax was no longer on the woolsack. He had reason to expect that the persecution, from which he had narrowly escaped in the summer, would be renewed. The events which had taken place during the recess, and especially the disasters of the campaign in Ireland, had furnished his enemies with fresh means of annoyance. His administration had not been successful ; and, though his failure was partly to be ascribed to causes against which no human wisdom could have contended, it was also partly to be ascribed to the peculiarities of his temper and his intellect. It was certain that a large party in the Commons would attempt to remove him ; and he could no longer depend on the protection of his master. It was natural that a prince whp was emphatically a man of action should become weary of a minister who was a man of speculation. Charles, who went to Council as he went to the play, solely to be amused, was delighted with an adviser who had a hundred pleasant and ingenious things to say on both sides of every question. But William had no taste for disquisitions and disputations, however lively and subtle, which occupied much time and led to no con- clusion. It was reported, and is not improbable, that on one occasion he could not refrain from expressing in, sharp terms at the council board his impatience at what seemed to him a morbid habit of indecision.* Halifax, mortified by his mischances in * " Halifax a eu une reprimands se'vere publiquement dans le conseil par le Prince d'Orange pour avoir trop balanced" Avaux to De Croissy, Dublin, June 16-26, 1689. " His mercurial ^it," says Buruet, ii. 4, " was not well suited with the King's phlegm," 44G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. public life, dejected by domestic calamities, disturbed by ap- prehensions of an impeachment, and no longer supported by royal favour, became sick of public life, and began to pine for the silence and solitude of his seat in Nottinghamshire, an old Cistercian Abbey buried deep among woods. Early in October it was known that he would no longer preside in the Upper House. It was at the same time whispered as a great secret that he meant to retire altogether from business, and that he retained the Privy seal only till a successor should be named. Chief Baron Atkyns was appointed Speaker of the Lords.* On some important points there appeared to be no difference of opinion in the legislature. The Commons unanimously resolved that they would stand by the King in the work of reconquering Ireland, and that they would enable him to prose- cute with vigour the war against France, f With equal unanim- ity they voted an extraordinary supply of two millions. | It was determined that the greater part of this sum should be levied by an assessment on real property. The rest was to be raised partly by a poll tax, and partly by new duties on tea, coffee, and chocolate. It was proposed that a hundred thousand pounds should be exacted from the Jews ; and this proposition was at first favourably received by the house : but difficulties arose. The Jews presented a petition in which they declared that they could not afford to pay such a sum, and that they would rather leave the kingdom than stay there to be ruined. Enlightened politicians could not but perceive that special taxation, laid on a small class which happens to be rich, unpopular, and defence- less, is really confiscation, and must ultimately impoverish rather than enrich the State. After some discussion, the Jew tax was abandoned. * Clarendon's Diary, Oct. 10, 169; Lords' Journals, Oct. 19, 1C89. t Commons' Journals, Oct. 24, ICtt'J. J Commons' Journals, Nov. 2, 1689. Commons' Journals, November 7, 19, Dec. 30, 1689. The rule of the House then was that no petition could be received against the imposition of a tax. This rule was, after a very hard fight, rescinded in 1842. The petition of the Jews was not received, and is not mentioned in t]*e Journals. But something may be learned about it from Luttrell's Diary and from Grey's Debates, Nov. 19, 1C89, WILLIAM AXD MAKY. 447 The Bill of Rights, which, in the last Session, had, after causing much altercation between the Houses, been suffered to drop, was again introduced, and was speedily passed. The peers no longer insisted that any person should be designated by name as successor to the crown, if Mary, Anne, and William should all die without posterity. During eleven years nothing more was heard of the claims of the House of Brunswick. The Bill of Rights contained some provisions which deserve special mention. The Convention had resolved that it was contrary to the interest of the kingdom to be governed by a Papist, but had prescribed no test which could ascertain whether a prince was or was not a Papist. The defect was now supplied. It was enacted that every English Sovereign should, in full Parliament, and at the coronation, repeat and subscribe the Declaration against Transubstantiation. It was also enacted that no person who should marry a Papist should be capable of reigning in England, and that, if the Sovereign should marry a Papist, the subject should be absolved from allegiance. Burnet boasts that this part of the Bill of Rights was his work. He had little reason to boast : for a more wretched specimen of legislative workmanship will not easily be found. In the first place, no test is prescribed. Whether the consort of a Sovereign has taken the oath of supremacy, has signed the declaration against transubstantiation, has communicated according to the ritual of the Church of England, are very simple issues of fact. But whether the consort of a Sovereign is or is not a Papist is a question about which people may argue for ever. What is a Papist ? The word is not a word of definite signification either in law or in. theology. It is merely a popular nickname, and means very different things in different mouths. Is every person a Papist who is willing to concede to the Bishop of Rome a primacy among Christian prelates? If so, James the First, Charles the First, Laud, Heylyn, were Papists.* Or is the appellation to * James, in the very treatise in which he tried to prove the Pope to be Anti- Christ, says : "For myself, if that were yet the question, I would with all my heart give my consent that the Bishop of Rome should have the first seat." There is a remarkable letter on this subject written by James to Charles and 448 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. be confined to persons who hold the ultramontane doctrines touching the authority of the Holy See ? If so, neither Bossuet nor Pascal was a Papist. What again is the legal effect of the words which absolve the subject from his allegiance ? Is it meant that a person arraigned for high treason may tender evidence to prove that the Sovereign has married a Papist ? Would Thistlewood, for example, have been entitled to an acquittal, if he icould have proved that King George the Fourth had married Mrs. Fitzher- bert, and that Mrs. Fitzherbert was a Papist? It is. not easy to believe that any tribunal would have gone into such a question. Yet to what purpose is it to enact that, in a certain case, the subject shall be absolved from his allegiance, if the tribunal before which he is tried for a violation of his allegiance is not to go into the question whether that case has arisen ? The question of the dispensing power was treated in a very different manner, was fully considered, and was finally settled in the only way in which it could be settled. The Declaration of Right had gone no farther than to pronounce that the dispen- sing power, a.; of late exercised, was illegal. That a certain dispensing power belonged to the Crown was a proposition sanc- tioned by authorities and precedents of which even Whig lawyers could not speak without respect : but as to the precise extent of this power hardly any two jurists were agreed; and every attempt to frame a definition had failed. At length by the Bill of Rights the anomalous prerogative which had caused so many fierce disputes was absolutely and for ever taken away.* In the House of Commons there was, as might have been ex- pected, a series of sharp debates on the misfortunes of the au- tumn. The negligence or corruption of the Navy Board, the frauds of the contractors, the rapacity of the captains of the King's ships, the losses of the London merchants, were themes Buckingham, when they were in Spain. Heylyn, speaking of Laud's negotiation with Rome, says : " So that upon the point the Pope was to content himself among us in England with a priority instead of a superiority over other Bishops, and with a primacy instead of a supremacy in these parts of Christendom, which I conceive no man of learning and sobriety would have grudged to grant him." * Stat. 1 W. & M. BOSS. 2. c. 2. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 449 for many keen speeches. There was indeed reason for anger. A severe enquiry, conducted by William in person at the Treas- ury, had just elicited the fact that much of the salt with which the meat furnished to the fleet had been cured had been by acci- dent mixed with galls such as are used for the purpose of making ink. The victuallers threw the blame on the rats, and maintained that the provisions thus seasoned, though certainly disagreeable to the palate, were not injurious to health.* The Commons were in no temper to listen to such excuses. Several persons who had been concerned in cheating the government and poisoning the seamen were taken into custody by the Ser- jeant, t But no censure was passed on the chief offender, Tor- rington ; nor does it appear that a single voice was raised against him. He had personal friends in both parties. He had many popular qualities. Even his vices were not those which excite public hatred. The people readily forgave a courageous openhanded sailor for being too fond of his bottle, his boon com- panions, and his mistresses, and did not sufficiently consider how great must be the perils of a country of which the safety de- pends on a man sunk in indolence, stupified by wine, enervated by licentiousness, ruined by prodigality, and enslaved by syco- phants and harlots. The sufferings of the army in Ireland called forth strong ex- pressions of sympathy and indignation. The Commons did jus- tice to the firmness and wisdom with which Schomberg had conducted the most arduous of all campaigns. That he had not achieved more was attributed chiefly to the villauy of the Com- missariat. The pestilence itself, it was said, would have been no serious calamity if it had not been aggravated by the wickedness of man. The disease had generally spared those who had warm garments and bedding, and had swept away by thousands those who were thinly clad and who slept on the wet ground. Im- mense sums had been drawn out of the Treasury : yet the pay of the troops was in arrear. Hundreds of horses, tens of thou- sands of shoes, had been paid for by the public : yet the bag- * Treasury Minute Book, Nov. .. irsn. t Coainions' Journals ami Grey s I^bates, Nov. 13, 14, 18, 19, 23, 28, 1689. VOL. III. 29 450 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. gage was left behind for want of beasts to draw it : and the sol- diers were marching barefoot through the mire. Seventeen hundred pounds hud been charged to the government for medi- cines : yet the common drugs with which every apothecary in the smallest market town was provided, were not to be found in the plague-stricken camp. The cry against Shales was loud. An address was carried to the throne, requesting that he might be sent for to England, and that his accounts and papers might be secured. With this request the King readily complied : but the Whig majority was not satisfied. By whom had Shales been recommended for so important a place as that of Commis- sary General ? He had been a favourite at Whitehall in the worst times. He had been zealous for the Declaration of Indul- gence. Why had this creature of James been entrusted with the business of catering for the army of William ? It was pro- posed by some of those who were bent on driving all Tories and Trimmers from office to ask Plis Majesty by whose advice a man so undeserving of the royal confidence had been employed. The most moderate and judicious Whigs pointed out the inde- cency and impolicy of interrogating the King, and of forcing him either to accuse his ministers or to quarrel with the repre- sentatives of his people. " Advise His Majesty, if you will," said Somers, " to withdraw his confidence from the counsellors who recommended this unfortunate appointment. Such advice, given, as we should probably give it, unanimously, must have great weight with him. But do not put to him a question such as no private gentleman would willingly answer. Do not force him, in defence of his own personal dignity, to protect the very men whom you wish him to discard." After a hard fight of two days, and several divisions, the address was carried by a hundred and ninety five votes to a hundred and forty-six.* The King, as might have been foreseen, coldly refused to turn in- former ; arid the House did not press him further.! To another address which requested that a Commission might be sent to ex- amine into the state of things in Ireland, William returned a * Commons' Journals and Orev's Debates, Nov. 26, and 27, 1689. t Commons' Journals, lso\ ember 2&, December 2, 1GS9. WILLIAM AND MART. 451 very gracious answer, and desired the Commons to name the Commissioners. The Commons, not to be outdone in courtesy, excused themselves, and left it to His Majesty's wisdom to se- lect the fittest persons.* In the midst of the angry debates on the Irish war a pleasing incident produced for a moment good humour and unanimity. Walker had arrived in London, and had been received there with boundless enthusiasm. His face was in every print shop. Newsletters describing his person and his demeanour were sent to every corner of the kingdom. Broadsides of prose and verse written in his praise were cried in every street. The Companies of London feasted him splendidly in their halls. The common people crowded to gaze on him wherever he moved, and almost stifled him with rough caresses. Both the Universities offered him the degree of Doctor of Divinity. Some of his admirers advised him to present himself at the palace in that military garb in which he had repeatedly headed the sallies of his fellow townsmen. But. with a better judgment than he sometimes showed, he made his appearance at Hampton Court in the peace- ful robe of his profession, was most graciously received, and was presented with an order for five thousand pounds. " And do not think, Doctor," William said, with great benignity, " that I offer you this sum as payment for your services. I assure you that I consider your claims on me as not at all diminished." f- It is true that amidst the general applause the voice of de- traction made itself heard. The defenders of Londonderry were men of two nations and of two religions. During the siege, hatred of the Irishry had held together all Saxons ; and hatred of Popery had held together all Protestants. But, when the danger was over, the Englishman and the Scotchman, the Episcopalian and the Presbyterian, began to wrangle about the distribution of praises and awards. The dissenting preachers, T\ho had zealously assisted Walker in the hour of peril, com- * Commons' Journals and Grey's Debates. November 30, December 2, 1689. t London Gazette, September 2, 1689 ; Observations upon Mr. Walker's Ac- count of the Siege of Londonderry, licensed October 4, 1689 ; Luttrell's Diary ; Mr. J. Mackenzie's Narrative a False Libel, a Defence of Mr. G. Walker written by his Friend in his Absence, 1G90. 452 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. plained that, in the account which he had published of the siege, he had, though acknowledging that they had done good service, omitted to mention their names. The complaint was just, and, had it been made in a manner becoming Christians and gentle- men, would probably have produced a considerable effect on the public mind. But Walker's accusers in their resentment disre- garded truth and decency, used scurrilous language, brought calumnious accusations which were triumphantly refuted, and thus threw away the advantage which they had possessed. Walker defended himself with moderation and candour. His friends fought his battle with vigour, and retaliated keenly on his assailants. At Edinburgh perhaps the public opinion might have been against him. But in London the controversy seems only to have raised his character. Pie was regarded as an Anglican divine of eminent merit, who, after having heroically defended his religion against an army of Irish Rapparees, was rabbled by a mob of Scotch Covenanters.* He presented to the Commons a petition setting forth the destitute condition to which the widows and orphans of some brave men who had fallen during the siege were now reduced. The Commons instantly passed a vote of thanks to him, and re- solved to present to the King an address requesting that ten thousand pounds might be distributed among the families whose sufferings had been so touchingly described. The next day it was rumoured about the benches that Walker was in the lobby. He was called in. The Speaker, with great dignity and grace, informed him that the House had made haste to comply with liis request, commended him in high terms for having taken on hitnself to govern and defend a city betrayed by its proper gov- ernors and defenders, and charged him to tell those who had * Walker's True Account, 1689 ; An Apology for the Failures charged on the True Account, 1G89 ; Reflections on the Apology, 1689; A Vindication of the True Account by Walker, 1(389 ; Mackenzie's Narrative, 1630 ; Mr. Mackenzie's Narra- tive a Fal.-e Libel, 1690 ; Dr. Walker's Invisible Champion foyled by Mackenzie, 1090 ; Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, Dec. 4, and 11, 1689, The Oxford editor of Burnet's History expresses his surprise at the silence which the Bishop ob- serves about Walker. In the Burnet MS. Harl. 6584, there is an animated pane- gyric on Walker. Why that panegyric does not appear in the History I am at a loss to explain. WILLIAM AND MART. 453 fought under him that their fidelity and valour would always be held in grateful remembrance by the Commons of England.* About the same time the course of parliamentary business was diversified by another curious and interesting episode, which, like the former, sprang out of the events of the Irish war. In the pr seeding spring, when every messenger from Ireland brought evil tidings, and when the authority of James was acknowledged in every part of that kingdom, except behind the ramparts of Londonderry and on the banks of Lough Erne, it was natural that Englishmen should remember with how terrible an energy the great Puritan warriors of the preceding generation had crushed the insurrection of the Celtic race. The names of Cromwell, of Ireton, and of the other chiefs of the conquering army, were in many mouths. One of those chiefs, Edmund Ludlow, was still living. At twenty-two he had served as a volunteer in the parliamentary army : at thirty he had risen to the rank of Lieutenant General. He was now old : but the viguor of his mind was unimpaired. His courage was of the truest temper ; his understanding strong, but narrow. What he saw he saw clearly : but he saw not much at a glance. In an age of perfidy and levity, he had, amidst manifold tempta- tions and dangers, adhered firmly to the principles of his youth. His enemies could not deny that his life had been consistent, and that with the same spirit with which he had stood up against the Stuarts he had stood up against the Cromwells. There was but a single blemish on his fame : but that blemish, in the opin- ion of the great majority of his countrymen, was one for which no merit could compensate and which no time could efface. His name and seal were on the death warrant of Charles the First. After the Restoration, Ludlow found a refuge on the shores of the Lake of Geneva. He was accompanied thither by another member of the High Court of Justice. John Lisle, the husl and of that Alice Lisle whose death has left a lasting stain on the memory of James the Second. But even in Switzerland the regicides were not safe. A large price was set on their * Commons' Journals, November 18 and 19, 1689 ; and Grey's Debates. 454 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. heads ; and a succession of Irish adventurers, iuflamed by national and religious animosity, attempted to earn the bribe. Lisle fell by the hand of one of these assassins. But Ludlow escaped unhurt from all the machinations of his enemies. A small knot of vehement and determined Whigs regarded him with a veneration, which increased as years rolled away, and left him almost the only survivor, certainly the most illustrious survivor, of a mighty race of men, the conquerors in a terrible civil war, the judges of a king, the founders of a republic. More than once he had been invited by the enemies of the House of Stuart to leave his asylum, to become their captain, and to give the signal for rebellion : but he had wisely refused to take any part in the desperate enterprises which the Wildmans and Fergusons were never weary of planning.* The Revolution opened a new prospect to him. The right of the people to resist oppression, a right which, during many years, no man could assert without exposing himself to eccle- siastical anathemas and to civil penalties, had been solemnly recognised by the Estates of the realm, and had been proclaimed by Garter King at Arms on the very spot where the memorable scaffold had been set up forty years before. James had not, indeed, like Charles, died the death of a traitor. Yet the pun- ishment of the son might seem to differ from the punishment of the father rather in degree than in principle. Those who had recently waged war on a tyrant, who had turned him out of his palace, who had frightene'd him out of his country, who had deprived him of his crown, might perhaps think that the crimo of going one step further had been sufficiently expiated by thirty years of banishment. Ludlow's admirers, some of whom appear to have been in high public situations, assured him that he might safely venture over, nay, that he might expect to be sent in high command to Ireland, where his name was still cherished by his old soldiers and by their children. f He came : and early in September it was known that he was in London.^ Wade's Confession, Harl. MS. 0845. T See the Preface to the First Edition of his Memoirs, Vevay, 109S. J " Colonel Ludlow, an old Oliverian, and one of King Charles the First his WILLIAM AND MARY. 455 But it soon appeared that he and his friends had misunderstood the temper of the English people. By all, except a small extreme section of the Whig party, the act, in which he had borne a part never to be forgotten, was regarded not merely with the disapprobation due to a great violation of law and justice, but with horror such as even the Gunpowder Plot had not excited. The absurd and almost impious service which is still read in our churches on the thirtieth of January had pro- duced in the minds of the vulgar a strange association of ideas. The sufferings of Charles were confounded with the sufferings of the Redeemer of mankind ; and every regicide was a Judas, a Caiaphas, or a Herod. It was true that, when Ludlow sate on the tribunal in Westminster Hall, he was an ardent enthusiast of twenty-eight, and that he now returned from exile a grey- headed and wrinkled man in his seventieth year. Perhaps, therefore, if he had been content to live in close retirement, and to shun places of public resort, even zealous Royalists might not have grudged the old Republican a grave in his native soil. But he had no thought of hiding himself. It was soon rumoured that one cf those murderers, who had brought on England guilt, for which she annually, in sackcloth and ashes, implored God not to enter into judgment with her, was strutting about the streets of her capital and boasting that he should ere long com- mand her armies. His lodgings, it was said, were the head quarters of the most noted enemies of monarchy and episcopacy.* The subject was brought before the House of Commons. The Tory members called loudly for justice on the traitor. None of the Whigs ventured to say a word in his defence. One or two faintly expressed a doubt whether the fact of his return had been proved by evidence such as would warrant a parlia- mentary proceeding. This objection was disregarded. It was resolved, without a division, that the King should be requested to issue a proclamation for the apprehending of Ludlow. Sey- mour presented the address ; and the King promised to do Judges, is arrived lately in this kingdom from Switzerland." LuttrelPs Diary, September 1GS9. Third Caveat against the Whigs, 1712. 456 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. what was asked. Some days however elapsed before the pro- clamation appeared.* Ludlow had time to make his escape, and hid himself in his Alpine retreat, never again to emerge. English travellers are still taken to see his house close to the lake, and his tomb in a church among the vineyards which overlook the little town of Vevay. On the house was formerly legible an inscription purporting that to him to whom God is a father every land is a fatherland ; f and the epitaph on the tomb still attests the feelings with which the stern old Puritan to the last regarded the people of Ireland and the House of Stuart. Tories and Whigs had concurred, or had affected to concur, in paying honour to Walker and in putting a brand on Ludlow. But the feud between the two parties was more bitter than ever. The King had entertained a hope that, during the recess, the animosities which had in the preceding session prevented an Act of Indemnity from passing would have been mitigated. On the day on which the Houses reassembled, he had pressed them earnestly to put an end to the fear and discord which could never cease to exist, while great numbers held their property and their liberty, and not a few even their Jives, by an uncertain tenure. His exhortation proved of no effect. October, November, December passed away ; and nothing was done. An Indem- nity Bill indeed had been brought in, and read once : but it had ever since lain neglected on the table of the House. J Vindic- tive as had been the mood in which the Whigs had left West- minster, the mood in which they returned was more vindictive still. Smarting from old sufferings, drunk with recent prosper- ity, burning with implacable resentment, confident of irresistible strength, they were not less rash and headstrong than in the days of the Exclusion Bill. Sixteen hundred and eighty was come again. Again all compromise was rejected. Again the * Commons' Journals, November 6 and 8, 1689 ; Grey's Debates ; London Ga- zette, November 18. t " Oimie solum forti patria, quia patris." See Addison's Travels. It is a remarkable circumstance that Addison, though a Whig, speaks of Li;diow in lan- guage which would better have become a Tory, and sneers at the inscription as cant. U their places according to the order of precedence in which they stood as peers. t The dedication, however, was thought too laudatory. " The only thing, Mr. Pone used to say, he could never forjrive his philosophic master was the dedica- tion to the Essay." Rnffhead's Life of Pope. $ Van Citters to the States General, -^-^-1630 ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary ; jlay 5, Treasury Letter Book, Feb. 4, 1669-90. 492 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. "While these changes were making in the offices round Whitehall, the Commissions of Lieutenancy all over the king- dom were revised. The Tories had, during twelve months, been complaining that their share in the government of the dis- tricts in which they lived bore no proportion to their number, to their wealth, and to the consideration which they enjoyed in society. They now regained with great delight their former position in their shires. The Whigs raised a cry that the King was foully betrayed, and that he had been induced by evil coun- sellors to put the sword into the hands of men who, as soon as a favourable opportunity offered, would turn the edge against himself. In a dialogue which was believed to have been writ- ten by the newly created Earl of Warrington, and which had a wide circulation at the time, but has long been forgotten, the Lord Lieutenant of a county was introduced expressing his ap- prehensions that the majority of his deputies were traitors at heart.* But nowhere was the excitement produced by the new distribution of power so great as in the capital. By a Com- mission of Lieutenancy which had been issued immediately after the Revolution, the trainbands of London had been put under the command of stanch Whigs. Those powerful and opulent citizens whose names were omitted alleged that the list was filled with elders of Puritan congregations, with Shaftesbury's brisk boys, with Rye House plotters, and that it was scarcely possible to find, mingled with that multitude of fanatics and lev- ellers, a single man sincerely attached to monarchy and to the Church. A new Commission now appeared framed by Caer- marthen and Nottingham. They had taken counsel with Comp- ton, the Bishop of the diocese; and Compton was not a very discreet adviser. He had originally been a High Churchman and a Tory. The severity with which he had been treated in the late reign had transformed him into a Latitudinarian and a rebel ; and he had now, from jealousy of Tillotson, turned High Qhurchman and Tory again. The changes which were made * The Dialogue between a Lord Lieutenant and one of his Deputies will not be found in the collection of Warrington's writings which was published in 1694, under the sanction, as it should seem, of his family. WILLIAM AND MART. 493 by his recommerrdation raised a storm in the City. The Whigs complained that they were ungratefully proscribed by a govern- ment which owed its existence to them ; that some of the best friends of King William had been dismissed with contumely to make room for some of his worst enemies, for men who were as unworthy of trust as any Irish Rapparee, for men who had de- livered up to a tyrant the charter and the immemorial privi- leges of London, for men who had made themselves notorious by the cruelty with which they had enforced the penal laws against Protestant dissenters, nay, for men who had sate on those juries which had found Russell and Cornish guilty.* The discontent was so great that it seemed, during a short time, likely to cause pecuniary embarrassment to the State. The supplies voted by the late Parliament came in slowly. The wants of the public service were pressing. In such circumstances it was to the citizens of the capital that the government always looked for help ; and the government of William had hitherto looked especially to those citizens who professed Whig opinions. Things were now changed. A few eminent Whigs, in their first anger, sullenly refused to advance money. Nay, one or two unexpect- edly withdrew considerable sums from the Exchequer.! The financial difficulties might have been serious, had not some wealthy Tories, who, if Sacheverell's clause had become law, would have been excluded from all municipal honours, offered the Treasury a hundred thousand pounds down, and promised to raise a still larger sum.$ While the City was thus agitated, came a day appointed by royal proclamation for a general fast. The reasons assigned for this solemn act of devotion were the lamentable state of Ireland and the approaching departure of the King. Prayers were offered up for the safety of His Majesty's person and for * Van Citters to the States General, March 18-28, April 4-14, 1690 ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary ; Burnet, ii. 72. The Triennial Mayor, or the Rapparees, a Poem, 1691. The poet says of one of the new civil functionaries : " Soon his pretence to conscience we can rout. And in a bloody jury find him out. Where noble Pubhus worried was with rogues." t Treasury Minute Book, Feb. 5, 1689-90. t Van Citters, Feb. 11-21, Mar. 14-24, Mar. 18 28, 1690. 49-i HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the success of his arms. The churches of London were crowd- ed. The most eminent preachers of the capital, who were, with scarcely an exception, either moderate Tories or moderate Whigs, did their best to calm the public mind, and earnestly ex- horted their flocks not to withhold, at this great conjuncture, a hearty support from the prince, with whose fate was bound up the fate of the whole nation. Burnet told a large congregation from the pulpit how the Greeks, when the Great Turk was pre- paring to besiege Constantinople, could not be persuaded to con- tribute any part of their wealth for the common defence, and how bitterly they repented of their avarice when they were com- pelled to deliver up to the victorious infidels the treasures which had been refused to the supplications of the last Christian emperor.* The Whigs, however, as a party, did not stand in need of such an admonition. Grieved and angry as they were, they were perfectly sensible that on the stability of the throne of William depended all that they most highly prized. What soirfe of them might, at this conjuncture, have been tempted to do if they could have found another leader, if, for example, their Protestant Duke, their King Monmouth, had still been, living, may be doubted. But their only choice was between the Sovereign whom they had set up and the Sovereign whom they had pulled down. It would have been strange indeed if they had taken part with James in order to punish William, when the worst fault which they imputed to William was that he did not participate in the vindictive feeling with which they remem- bered the tyranny of James. Much as they disliked the Bill of Indemnity, they had not forgotten the Bloody Circuit. They therefore, even in their ill humour, continued true to their own King, and, while grumbling at him, were ready to stand by him against his adversary with their lives and fortunes-! There were indeed exceptions : but they were very few ; and they were to be found almost exclusively in two classes, * Van Citters, March 14-26, 1C90. But he is mistaken as to the preacher. The Bermon is extant. It was preached at Bow Church before the Court of Alder- men. t Welwood's Mercmius Reformatus, Feb. 12, 1690. WILLIAM AND MART. 495 which, though widely differing from each other in social posi- tiou, closely resembled each other in laxity of principle. All the Whigs who are known to have trafficked with Saint Ger- mains, belonged, not to the main body of the party, but either to the head or to the tail. They were either patricians high in rank and office, or caitiffs who had long been employed in the foulest drudgery of faction. To the former class belonged Shrewsbury. Of the latter class the most remarkable specimen was Robert Ferguson. From the day on which the Convention Parliament was dissolved, Shrewsbury began to waver in his allegiance : but that he had ever wavered was not, till long after, suspected by the public. That Ferguson had, a few months after the Revolution, become a furious Jacobite, was no secret. to anybody, and ought not to have been matter of surprise to anybody. For his apostasy he could not plead even the miser- able excuse that he had been neglected. The ignominious ser- vices which he had formerly rendered to his party as a spy, a raiser of riots, a dispenser of bribes, a writer of libels, a prompt- er of false witnesses, had been rewarded only too prodigally for the honour of the new government. That he should hold any high office was of course impossible: But a sinecure place of live hundred a year had been created for him in the depart- ment of the Excise. He now had what to him was opulence : but opulence did not satisfy him. For money indeed he had never scrupled to be guilty of fraud aggravated by hypocrisy : yet the love of money was not his strongest passion. Long habit had developed in him a moral disease from which people who have made political agitation their calling are seldom wholly free. He could not be quiet. Sedition, from being his business, had become his pleasure. It was as impossible for him to live without doing mischief as for an old dram drinker or an old opium eater to live without the daily dose of poison. The very discomforts and hazards of a lawless life had a strange attraction for him. He could no more be turned into a peaceable and loyal subject than the fox can be turned into a shepherd's dog, or than the kite can be taught the habits of the barn door fowl. The Red In- dian prefers his hunting ground to cultivated fields and stately 496 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. cities: ih: gipsy, sheltered by a commodious roof, and pro- vided with meat in due season, still pines for the ragged tent on the moorland the chance meal of carrion ; and even so Fer- guson became weary of plenty and security, of his salary, his house, his table, and his coach, and longed to be again the presi- dent of societies into which none could enter without a pass- word, the director of secret presses, the distributor of inflam- matory pamphlets; to see the walls placarded with descriptions of his person and offers of reward for his apprehension ; to have six or seven names, with a different wig arid cloak for each, and to change his lodgings thrice a week at dead of night. His hostility was not to Popery or to Protestantism, to monarchical government or to republican government, to the House of Stuart or to the House of Nassau, but to whatever was at the time established. By the Jacobites this new ally was eagerly welcomed. They were at that moment busied with schemes in which the help of a veteran plotter was much needed. There had been a great stir among them from the day on which it had been announced that William had determined to take the command in Ireland ; and they were all looking forward with impatient hope to his departure. He was not one of those princes against whom men lightly venture to set up a standard of rebellion. His courage, his sagacity, the secrecy of his counsels, the success which had generally crowned his enterprises, overawed the vulgar. Even his most acrimonious enemies feared him at least as much as * they hated him. While he was at Kensington, ready to take horse at a moment's notice, malecontents who prized their heads and their estates were generally content to vent their hatred by drinking confusion to his hooked nose, and by squeez- ing with significant energy the orange which was his emblem. But their courage rose when they reflected that the sea would soon roll between him and our island. In the military and political calculations of that age, thirty leagues of water were as important as three hundred leagues now are. The winds and waves frequently interrupted all communication between England and Ireland. It sometimes happened that, during a WILLIAM AND MARY. 497 fortnight or three weeks, not a word of intelligence from Lon- don reached Dublin. Twenty English counties might be up in arms long before any rumour that an insurrection was even apprehended could reach Ulster. Early in the spring, there- fore, the leading malecontents assembled in London for the purpose of concerting an extensive plan of action, and corres- ponded assiduously both with France and with Ireland. Such was the temper of the English factions when, on the twentieth of March, the new Parliament met. The first duty which the Commons had to perform was that of choosing a Speaker. Trevor was proposed by Lowther, was elected with- out opposition, and was presented and approved with the ordi- nary ceremonial. The King then made a speech in which he especially recommended to the consideration of the Houses two important subjects, the settling of the revenue and the granting of an amnesty. He represented strongly the necessity of des- patch. Every day was precious, the season for action was ap- proaching. " Let not us," he said, " be engaged in debates while our enemies are in the field." * The first subject which the Commons took into consideration was the state of the revenue. A great part of the taxes had, since the accession of William and Mary, been collected under the authority of Acts passed for short terms, and it was now time to determine on a permanent arrangement. A list of the salaries and pensions for which provision was to be made was laid before the House ; and the amount of the suras thus ex- pended called forth very just complaints from the independent members, among whom. Sir Charles Sedley distinguished him- self by his sarcastic pleasantry. A clever speech which he made against the placemen stole into print and was widely circu- lated : it has since been often republished ; and it proves, what his poems and plays might make us doubt, that his contempo- raries were not mistaken in considering him as a man of parts and vivacity. Unfortunately the ill humour which the sight of the Civil List caused evaporated in jests and invectives with- out producing any reform. Commons' Journals, March 20, 21, 22, 1CSD-90. VOL. III. 32 498 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. The ordinary revenue by which the government had been sup- ported before the Revolution had been partly hereditary, and had been partly drawn from taxes granted to each sovereign for life. The hereditary revenue had passed, with the crown, to William and Mary. It was derived from the rents of the royal domains, from fees, from fines, from wine licenses, fro;u the first fruits and tenths of benefices, from the receipts of the Post Office, and from that part of the excise which had, immediately after the Restoration, been granted to Charles the Second and to his suc- cessors for ever in lieu of the feudal services due to our ancient kings. The income from all these sources was estimated at be- tween four and five hundred thousand pounds.* Those duties of excise and customs which had been granted to James for life had, at the close of his reign, yielded about nine hundred thousand pounds annually. William naturally wished to have this income on the same terms on which his Uncle had enjoyed it ; and his ministers did their best to gratify his wishes. Lowther moved that the grant should be to the King and Queen for their joint and separate lives, and spoke repeatedly and earnestly in defence of this motion. He set forth William's claims to public gratitude and confidence ; the nation rescued from Popery and arbitrary power ; the Church deliv- ered from persecution ; the constitution established on a firm basis. Would the Commons deal grudgingly with a prince who had done more for England than had ever been done for her by any of his predecessors in so short a time, with a prince who was now about to expose himself to hostile weapons and pesti- lential air in order to preserve the English colony in Ireland, with a prince who was prayed for in every corner of the world where a congregation of Protestants could meet for the wor- ship of God ? f But on this subject Lowther harangued in vain. Whigs and Tories were equally fixed in the opinion that the liberality of Parliaments had been the chief cause of the disas- ters of the last thirty years ; that to the liberality of the Parlia- meutof 1GGO was to be ascribed the misgovernment of the Cabal, * Commons' Journals, March 28, 1C90, and March 1, and March 20, 1688-9. * Grey's Debates, March 27, and 28, 1690 WILLIAM ASD MART. 499 that to the liberality of the Parliament of 1G85 was to be as- cribed the Declaration of Indulgence, -and that the Parliament of 1690 would be inexcusable if it did not profit by experience. After much dispute a compromise was made. That portion of the excise which had been settled for life on James, and which was estimated at three hundred thousand pounds a year, was settled on William and Mary for their joint and separate lives. It was supposed that with the hereditary revenue, and with three hundred thousand a year more from the excise, Their Majesties would have, independent of parliamentary control, between seven and eight hundred thousand a year. Out of this income was to be defrayed the charge both of the royal house- hold and of those civil offices of which a list had been, laid before the House. This income was therefore called the Civil List. The expenses of the royal household are now entirely separated from the expenses of the civil government : but, by a whimsical perversion, the name of Civil List has remained attached to that portion of the revenue which is appropriated to the expenses of the royal household. It is still more strange that several neighbouring nations should have thought this most unmeaning of all names worth borrowing. Those duties of customs which had been settled for life on Charles and James successively, and which, in the year before the Revolution, had yielded six hundred thousand pounds, were granted to the Crown for a term of only four years.* William was by no means well pleased with this arrange- ment. He thought it unjust and ungrateful in a people whose liberties he had saved to bind him over to his good behaviour. ' ; The gentlemen of England," he said to Burnet, " trusted King James who was an enemy of their religion and of their laws ; and they will not trust me by whom their religion and their laws have been preserved." Burnet answered very properly that there was no mark of personal confidence which Ilis Majesty was not entitled to demand, but that this question was not a * Commons' Journals, Mar. 28, 1690. A very clear and exact account of the way in which the revenue was settled was sent by Van Citters to the States Gen- eral, April 7-17, 1690. 500 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. question of personal confidence. The Estates of the Realm wished to establish a general principle. They wished to set a precedent which might secure a remote posterity against evils such as the indiscreet liberality of former parliaments had pro- duced. " From those evils Your Majesty has delivered this generation. By accepting the gift of the Commons on tho terms on which it is offered Your Majesty will be also a deliv- erer of future generations." William was not convinced : but he had too much wisdom and self-command to give way to his ill humour, and he accepted graciously what he could not but consider as ungraciously given.* The Civil List was charged with an annuity of twenty thou- sand pounds to the Princess of Denmark, in- addition to an an- nuity of thirty thousand pounds which had been settled on her at the time of her marriage. This arrangement was the result of a compromise which had been effected with much difficulty and after miny irritating disputes. The King and Queen had never, since the commencement of their reign, been on very good terms with their sister. That William should have been disliked by a woman who had just sense enough to perceive that his temper was sour and his manners repulsive, and who was utterly incapable of appreciating his higher qualities, is not extraordinary. But Mary was made to be loved. So lively and intelligent a woman could not indeed derive much pleasure from the society of Anne, who, when in good humour, was meekly stupid, and, when in bad humour, was sulkily stupid. Yet the Queen, whose kindness had endeared her to her hum- blest attendants, would hardly have made an enemy of one whom it was her duty and her interest to make a friend, had not an interest strangely potent and strangely malignant been incessantly at work to divide the Royal House against itself. The fondness of the Princess for Lady Marlborough was such as, in a superstitious age, would have been ascribed to some talis- man or potion. Not only had the friends, in their confidential intercourse with each other, dropped all ceremony and all titles, uud become plain Mrs. Morley and plain Mrs. Freeinaii ; but * Buniet, ii. 43. WILLIAM AND MART. 501 even Prince George, who cared as much for the dignity of his birth as he was capable of caring for anything but claret and calvered salmon, submitted to be Mr. Morley. The countess boasted that she had selected the name of Freeman because it was peculiarly suited to the frankness and boldness of her character ; and, to do her justice, it was not by the ordinary arts of courtiers that she established and long maintained her des- potic empire over the feeblest of minds. She had little of that tact which is the characteristic talent of her sex : she was far too violent to flatter or to dissemble : but, by a rare chance, she had fallen in with a nature on which dictation and contradiction acted as philtres. In this grotesque friendship all the loyalty, the patience, the self devotion, was on the side of the mistress. The whims, the haughty airs, the fits of ill temper, were on the side of the waiting woman. Nothing is more curious than the relation in which the two ladies stood to Mr. Freeman, as they called Marlborough. In foreign countries people knew in general that Anne was gov- erned by the Churchills. They knew also that the man who appeared to enjoy so large a share of her favour was not only a great soldier and politician, but also one of the finest gentlemen of his time, that his face and figure were eminently handsome, his tt mper at once bland and resolute, his manners at once engaging and noble. Nothing could be more natural than that graces and accomplishments like his should win a female heart. On the Continent therefore many persons imagined that he was Anne's favoured lover ; and he was so described in contemporary French libels which have long been forgotten. In England this calumny never gained credit even with the vulgar, and is nowhere to be found even in the most ribald doggrel that was sung about our streets. In truth the Princess seems never to have been guilty of a thought inconsistent with her conjugal vows. To her, Marlborough, with all his genius and his valour, his beauty and his grace, was nothing but the husband of her friend. Direct power over Her Royal Highness he had none. He could influence her only by the instrumentality of his wife ; and his wife was no passive instrument. Though it is impossible 502 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. to discover, in anything that she ever did, said, or wrote, any indication of superior understanding, her fierce passions and strong will enabled her often to rule a husband who was born to rule gravo senates and mighty armies. His courage, that courage which the most perilous emergencies of war only made cooler and more steady, failed him when he had to encounter his Sarah's ready tears and voluble reproaches, the poutings of her lip and the tossings of her head. History exhibits to us few spectacles more remarkable than that of a great and wise man, who, when he had contrived vast and profound schemes of policy, could carry them into effect only by inducing one foolish woman, who was often, unmanageable, to manage another woman who was more foolish still. In one point the Earl and the Countess were perfectly agreed. They were equally bent on getting money ; though, when it was got, he loved to hoard it, and she was not unwil- ling to spend it.* The favour of the Princess they both regard- ed as a valuable estate. In her father's reign they had begun to grow rich by means of her bounty. She was naturally inclined to parsimony ; and even when she was on the throne, her equipages and tables were by no means sumptuous.f It might have been thought, therefore, that, while she was a subject, thirty thousand a year, with a residence in the palace, would have been more than sufficient for all her wants. There were probably not in the kingdom two noblemen possessed of such an income. But no income would satisfy the greediness of those who governed her. She repeatedly contracted debts which James repeatedly discharged, not without expressing much surprise and displeasure. The Revolution opened to the Churchills a new and bound- less prospect of gain. The whole conduct of their mistress at the great crisis had proved that she had no will, no judgment, * In a contemporary lampoon are these lines : " Oh, happy couple ! Jn their life There docs appear no sign of strife ; They do agree (.0 in the main, To sacrifice their souls for gain." The Fetmle Nine, 1TOO. t Swift mentions the deficiency of hospitality and magnificence in her house. hold. Journal to Stella, August 8, 1711. WILLIAM AND MAKY. 503 no conscience, but theirs. To them she had sacrificed affec- tions, prejudices, habits, interests. In obedience to them, she had joined in the conspiracy against her father : she had fled from Whitehall in the depth of winter, through ice and mire, to a hackney coach : she had taken refuge in the rebel camp : she had consented to yield her place in the order of succession to the Prince of Orange. They saw with pleasure that she, over whom they possessed such boundless influence, possessed no common influence over others. Scarcely had the Revolution been accomplished when many Tories, dis- liking both the King who had been driven out and the King who had come in, and doubting whether their religion had more to fear from Jesuits or from Latitudinarians, showed a strong disposition to rally round Anne. Nature had made her a bigot. Such was the constitution of her mind that to the religion of her nursery she could not but adhere, without ex- amination and without doubt, till she was laid in her coffin. In the court of her father she had been deaf to all that could be urged in favour of transubstantiation and auricular confession. In the court of her brother in law she was equally deaf to all that could be urged in favour of a general union among Pro- testants. This slowness and obstinacy made her important. It was a great thing to be the only member of the Royal Family who regarded Papists and Presbyterians with impartial aversion. While a large party was disposed to make her an idol, she was regarded by her two artful servants merely as a puppet. They knew that she had it in her power to give serious annoyance to the government ; and they determined to use this power in order to extort money, nominally for her, but really for them- selves. While Marlborough was commanding the English forces in the Low Countries, the execution of the plan was necessarily left to his wife ; and she acted, not as he would doubtless have acted, with prudence and temper, but, as is plain even from her own narrative, with odious violence and insolence. Indeed she had passions to gratify from which he was altogether free. He, though one of the most covetous was one of the least acrimonious of mankind : but malignity was in her a stronger 504 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. passion than avarice. She hated easily: she hated heartily : and she hated implacably. Among the objects of her hatred were all who were related to her mistress either on the paternal or on the maternal side. No person who had a natural interest in the Princess could observe without uneasiness the strange infatua- tion which made her the slave of an imperious and reckless termagant. This the Countess well knew. In her view the Royal Family and the family of Hyde, however they might differ as to other matters, were leagued against her ; and she detested them all, James and James's Queen, William and Mary, Claren- don and Rochester. Now was the time to wreak the accumula- ted spite of years. It was not enough to obtain a great, a regal, revenue for Anne. That revenue must be obtained by means which would wound and humble those whom the favourite abhorred. It must not be asked, it must not be accepted, as a mark of fraternal kindness, but demanded in hostile tones, and wrung by force from reluctant hands. No application \va? made to the King and Queen. But they learned with astonish- ment that Lady Marlborough was indefatigable in canvassing the Tory members of Parliament, that a Princess's party was forming that the House of Commons would be moved to settle O 7 on Her Royal Highness a vast income independent of the Crown. Mary asked her sister what these proceedings meant. ' I hear," said Anne, " that my friends have a mind to make me some settlement." It is said, that the Queen, greatly hurt by an expression which seemed to imply that she and her hus- band were not among her sister's friends, replied with un- wonted sharpness, " Of what friends do you speak ? What friends have you except the King and me ? " * The subject was never again mentioned between the sisters. Mary was probably sensible that she had made a mistake, in addressing herself to one who was merely a passive instrument in the hands of others. An attempt was made to open a negotiation with the Countess. After some inferior agents had expostulated * Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. But the Duchess was so abandoned a liar that it is impossible to believe a word that she says, except when she ac- cuses herself. WILLIAM AND MART. 505 with her in vain, Shrewsbury waited on her. It might have been expected that his intervention would have been successful : for, if the scandalous chronicle of those times could be trusted, lie had stood high, too high, in her favour.* He was authorised by the King to promise that, if the Princess would desist from soliciting the members of the House of Commons to support her cause, the income of Her Royal Highness should be increased from thirty thousand pounds to fifty thousand. The Countess flatly rejected this offer. The King's word, she had the insolence to hint, was not a sufficient security. " I am .confident," said Shrewsbury, " that His Majesty will strictly fulfil his engage- ments. If he breaks them I will not serve him an hour longer." " That may be very honourable in you," answered the pertina- cious vixen : " but it will be very poor comfort to the Princess." Shrewsbury after vainly attempting to move the servant, was at length admitted to an audience of the mistress. Anne, in language doubtless dictated by her friend Sarah, told him that the business had gone too far to be stopped, and must be left to the decision of the Commons. f The truth was that the Princess's prompters hoped to obtain from Parliament a much larger sum than was offered by the King. Nothing less than seventy thousand a year would'con- tent them. But their cupidity overreached itself.. The House of Commons showed a great disposition to gratify Her Royal Highness. But, when at length her too eager adherents ven- tured to name the sum which they wished to grant, the murmurs were loud. Seventy thousand a year at a time when the nece?- sary expenses of the State were daily increasing, when the receipt of the customs was daily diminishing, when trade was low, when every gentleman, every merchant, was retrenching something from the charge of his table and his cellar ! The general opinion was that th# sum which the King was under- * See the Female Xine. t The Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. "With that habitual inaccuracy which, even when she has-no motive for lying, makes it necessary to read every word written or dictated by her with suspicion, she creates Shrewsbury a Dukei and represents herself as calling him " Your Grace." He was not made a Duke till 1GM. 50G HISTORY OF ENGLAND. stood to be willing to give would be amply sufficient.* At last something was conceded oa both sides. The Princess was forced to content herself with fifty thousand a year ; and William agreed that this sum should be settled on her by Act of Parliament. She rewarded the services of Lady Marlborough with a pension of a thousand a year ; t but this was in all probability a very small part of what the Churchills gained by the arrangement. After these transactions the two royal sisters continued dur- ing many months to live on terms of civility and even of ap- parent friendship. But Mary, though she seems to have borne no malice to Anne, undoubtedly felt against Lady Marlborough as much resentment as a very gentle heart is capable of feeling. Marlborough had been out of England during a great part of the time which his wife had spent in canvassing among the Tories, and, though he had undoubtedly acted in concert with her, had acted, as usual, with temper and decorum. He there- fore continued to receive from William many marks of favour which were unaccompanied by any indication of displeasure. In the debate.* on the settling of the revenue, the distinction between Whigs and Tories does not appear to have been very clearly marked. In truth, if there was anything about which the two parties were agreed, it was the expediency of granting the customs to the Crown for a time not exceeding four years. But there were other questions which called forth the old animosi- ty in all its strength. The Whigs were now a minority, but a minority formidable in numbers, and more formidable in ability. They carried on the parliamentary war, not less acrimoniously than when they were a majority, but somewhat more artfully. They brought forward several motions, such as no High Church- man could well support, yet such as no servant of William and Mary could well oppose. The Tory who voted for those motions would run a great risk of being pointed at as a turn- coat by the sturdy Cavaliers of his country. The Tory who * Commons* Joumals, December 17 and 18, 1089. * Vindication of the Duchess of Marlborough. WILLIAM AND MART. 507 voted against those motions would run a great risk of being frowned upon at Kensington. It was apparently in pursuance of this policy that the Whigs laid on the table of the House of Lords a bill declaring all the laws passed by the Parliament to be valid laws. No sooner had this bill been read than the controversy of the preceding spring was renewed. The Whigs were joined on this occasion by almost all those noblemen who were connected with the government. The rigid Tories, with Nottingham at their head professed themselves willing to enact that every statute passed in 1G89 should have the same force that it would have had if it had been passed by a parliament convoked in a regular manner : but nothing would induce them to ac- knowledge that an assembly of lords and gentlemen, who had come together without authority from the Great Seul, was con- stitutionally a Parliament. Few questions seem to have ex- cited stronger passions than the question, practically altogether unimportant, whether the bill should or should not be declara- tory. Nottingham, always upright and honourable, but a bigot and a formalist, was on this subject singularly obstinate and un- reasonable. In one debate he lost his temper, forgot the de- corum which in general he strictly observed,and narrowly escaped being committed to the custody of the Black Rod.* After much wrangling, the Whigs carried their point by a majority of seven. f Many peers signed a strong protest written by Not- tingham. In this protest the bill, which was indeed open to verbal criticism, was contemptuously described as being neither good English nor good sense. The majority passed a resolu- tion that the protest should be expunged ; and against this reso- lution Nottingham and his followers again protested. $ The King was displeased by the pertinacity of his Secretary of Stute ; so much displeased indeed that Nottingham declared his intention of resigning the Seals : but the dispute was soon accommodated. Wil.i.tm was too wise not to know the value * Van Citters, April 8-18, 1000. t Van Citters, April 8-18 ; LuttrelPs Diary. 1 Lords' Journals, April 8 and 10, 1630 ; Burnet, li. 41. 508 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. of an honest man in a dishonest age. The very scrupulosity which made Nottingham a mutineer was a security that he would never be a traitor.* The Bill went down to the Lower House : and it was fully expected that the contest there would be long and fierce : but a single speech settled the question. Somers, with a force and eloquence which surprised even an audience accustomed to hear him with pleasure, exposed the absurdity of the doctrine held by the High Tories. " If the Convention," it was thus that he argued, " was not a Parliament, how can we be a Parlia- ment? An Act of Elizabeth provides that no person shall sit or vote in this House till he has taken the old oath of supremacy. Not one of us has taken that oath. Instead of it, we have all taken the new oath of supremacy which the late Parliament substituted for the old oath. It is therefore a contradiction to say that the Acts of the late Parliament are not now valid, and yet to ask us to enact that they shall henceforth be valid. For either they already are so, or we never can make them so." This reasoning, which was in truth as unanswerable as that of Euclid, brought the debate to a speedy close. The bill passed the Commons within forty-eight hours after it had been read the first time.f This was the only victory won by the Whigs during the whole session. They complained loudly in the Lower House of the change which had been made in the military government of the city of London. The Tories, conscious of their strength, and heated by resentment, not only refused to censure what had been done, but determined to express publicly and formally their gratitude to the King for having brought in so many churchmen and turned out so many schismatics. An address of thanks was moved by Clarges, member for Westminster, who was known to be attached to Caermarthen. " The alterations which have been made in the City," said Clarges, " show that His Majesty has a tender care of us. I hope that he will make similar Van Citters, ^^L^> 1090. May5, t Commons' Journals, April 8 and 9, 1690; Grey's Debates; Burnet, ii. 42. Van Cillers, writing on the 8th, mentions that a great struggle in the Lower House was expected. WILLIAM AND MART. 509 alterations in every county of the realm." The minority strug- gled hard. " "Will you thank the King," they said, " for putting the sword into the hands of his most dangerous enemies ? Some of those whom he has been advised to entrust with military command have not yet been able to bring themselves to take the oath of allegiance to him. Others were well known, in the evil days, as stanch jurymen, who were sure to find an Exclu- r.ionist guilty on any evidence or no evidence." Nor did the Whig orators refrain from using those topics on which all fac- tions are eloquent in the hour of distress, and which alf factions are but too ready to treat lightly in the hour of prosperity. - " Let us not," they said, " pass a vote which conveys a reflec- tion on a large body of our countrymen, good subjects, good Protestants. The King ought to be the head of his whole peo- ple. Let us not make him the head of a party." This was excellent doctrine : but it scarcely became the lips of men who, a few weeks before, had opposed the Indemnity Bill and voted for the Sacheverell clause. The address was carried by a hundred and eighty-five votes to a hundred and thirty-six.* As soon as the numbers had been announced, the minority, smarting from their defeat, brought forward a motion which caused no little embarrassment to the Tory placemen. The oath of allegiance, the Whigs said, was drawn in terms far too lax. It might exclude from public employment a few honest Jacobites who were generally too dull to be mischievous : but it was alto- gether inefficient as a means of binding the supple and slippery consciences of cunning priests, who, while affecting to hold the Jesuits in abhorrence, were proficients in that immoral casuistry which was the worst part of Jesuitism. Some grave divines, had openly said, others hud even dared to write, that they had sworn fealty to William in a sense altogether different from that in which they had sworn fealty to James. To James they had plighted the entire faith which a loyal subject owes to a rightful sovereign : but, when they promised to bear true allegiance to William, they meant only that they would not, whilst he was able to hang them for rebelling or conspiring against him, run * Commons' Journals, April 24, 1690 ; Grey's Debates. 510 HISTOUY OF ENGLAND. any risk of being hanged. None could wonder that the pre- cepts and example of the malecontent clergy should have cor- rupted the malecontent laity. When Prebendaries and Rectors were not ashamed to avow that they had equivocated in the very act of kissing the Gospels, it was hardly to be expected that at- torneys and taxgatherers would be more scrupulous. The conse- quence was that every department swarmed with traitors ; that men who ate the King's bread, men who were entrusted with the duty of collecting and disbursing his revenues, of victual- ling his ships, of clothing his soldiers, of making his artillery ready for the field, were in the habit of calling him an usurper, and of drinking to his speedy downfall. Could any government be safe which was hated and betrayed by its own servants? And was not the English government exposed to dangers which, even if all its servants were true, might well excite serious ap- prehensions ? A disputed succession, war with France, war in Scotland, war in Ireland, was not all this enough without treachery in every arsenal and in every custom house ? There must be an oath drawn in language too precise to be explained away, in language which no Jacobite could repeat without the consciousness that he was perjuring himself. Though the zeal- ots of indefeasible hereditary right had in general no objection to swear allegiance to William, they would probably not choose to abjure James. On such grounds as these, an Abjuration Bill of extreme severity was brought into the House of Commons. It was proposed to enact that every person who held any office, civil, military, or spiritual, should, on pain of deprivation, sol- emnly abjure the exiled King ; that the oath of abjuration might be tendered by any justice of the peace to any subject of Their Majesties ; and that, if it were refused, the recusant should be sent to prison, and should lie there as long as he con- tinued obstinate. The severity of this last provision was generally and most justly blamed. To turn every ignorant meddling magistrate into a state inquisitor, to insist that a plain man, who lived peac ea My, who obeyed the laws, who paid his taxes, who had never held and who did not expect ever to hold any office, and who had WILLIAM AND MARY. 511 never troubled his head about problems of political philosophy, should declare, under the sanction of au oath, a decided opinion on a point about which the most learned doctors of the age had written whole libraries of controversial books, and to send him to rot iu a gaol if he could not bring himself to swear, would surely have been the height of tyranny. The clause, which re- quired public functionaries, on pain of deprivation, to abjure the deposed King, was not open to the same objection. Yet even against this clause some weighty arguments were urged. A man, it was said, who has an honest heart and a sound understanding, is sufficiently bound by the present oath. Every such man when he swears to be faithful and to bear true allegiance to King William, does, by necessary implication, abjure King James. There may doubtless be among the servants of the Sta., and even among the ministers of the Church, some pers^w who have no sense of honour or religion, and who are ready * fore- swear themselves for lucre. There may be others who h-svc con- tracted the pernicious habit of quibbling away the mqsr, bPcred obligations, and who have convinced themselves that thev can in- nocently make, with a mental reservation, a promise which it would be sinful to make without such a reservation. Against these two classes of Jacobites it is true that the present test af- fords no s-'curity. But will the new test, will any test, be mor efficacious ? Will a person who has no conscience, or a person whose conscience can be set at rest by immoral sophistry, hesi- tate to repeat any phrase you can dictate ? The former will kiss the book without any scruple at all. The scruples of the latter will be very easily removed. He now swears allegiance to one King with a mental reservation. He will then abjure the other *King with a mental reservation. Do not flatter yourselves that the ingenuity of lawgivers will ever do vise an oath which the in- genuity of casuists will not evade. What indeed is the value of any oath in such a matter ? Among the many lessons which the troubles of the last generation have left us none is more plain than this, that no form of words, however precise, no im- precation, however awful, ever saved, or ever will save, a gov- ernment from destruction. Was not the Solemn League and 512 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. Covenant burned by the common hangman amidst the huzzas of tens of thousands who had themselves subscribed it ? Among the statesmen and warriors who bore the chief part in restoring Charles the Second, how many were there who had not repeat- edly abjured him ? Nay, is it not well known that some of thoso persons boastfully declared that, if they had not abjured him, they never could have restored him ? The debates were sharp ; and the issue during a short time seemed doubtful : for some of the Tories who were in office were unwilling to give a vote which might be thought to indi- cate that they were lukewarm in the cause of the King whom 'they served, William, however, took care to let it be under- stood that he had no wish to impose a new test on his subjects. A few words from him decided the event of the conflict. The bill was rejected thirty-six hours after it had been brought in by a hundred and ninety-two votes to a hundred and sixty-five.* Even after this defeat the "Whigs pertinaciously returned to the attack. Having failed in one House they renewed the bat- tle in the other. Five days after the Abjuration Bill had been thrown out in the Commons, another Abjuration Bill, somewhat milder, but still very severe, was laid on the table of the Lords.f What was now proposed was that no person should sit in either House of Parliament or hold any office, civil, military, or judi- cial, without making a declaration that he would stand by William and Mary against James and James's adherents. Every male in the kingdom who had attained the age of sixteen was to make the same declaration before a certain day. If he failed to do so he was to pay double taxes and to be incapable of exercis- ing the elective franchise. * Commons' Journals, April 24, 25, and 20 ; Grey's Debates ; Narcissus Lut- trcll's Diary. Narcissus is unusually angry. He calls the bill " a perfect trick of the fanatics to turn out the Bishops and most of the Church of England Clergy." In a Whig pasquinade entitled "A Speech intended to have been e;)okon on the Triennial Bill, on Jan. 28," 1G92-3, the King is said to have " brow- beaten the Abjuration Bill." t Lords' Journals, May 1, 1600. This Bill is among the Archives of the House of Lords. Burnet confounds it with the bill which tha Commons had rejected in the preceding weak. Ralph, who saw that Burnet had committed a blunder, but did not Bee what the blunder was, has, in trying to correct i , added several blunders of his own ; and the Oxford editor of Buruet has been, misled by Ralph. WILLIAM AND MARY. 513 On the day fixed for the second reading, the King came down to the House of Peers. He gave' his assent in form to several laws, unrobed, took his seat on a chair of state winch had been placed for him, and listened with much interest to the debate. To the general surprise, two noblemen who had been eminently zealous for the Revolution spoke against the proposed test. Lord Wharton, a Puritan who had fought for the Long Parliament, said, with amusing simplicity, that he was a very old man, that he had lived through troubled times, that he had taken a great many oaths in his day, and that he was afraid that he had not kept them all. He prayed that the sin might not be laid to his charge ; and he declared that he could not consent to lay any more snares for his own soul and for the souls of his neighbours. The Earl of Macclesfield, the captain of the Eng- lish volunteers who had accompanied William from Helvoetsluys to Torbay, declared that he was much in the same case with Lord Wharton. Marlborough supported the bill. He wondered, he said, that it should be opposed by Macclesfield, who had borne so prominent a part in the Revolution. Macclesfield, irritated by the charge of inconsistency, retorted with terrible severity : " The noble Earl," he said, " exaggerates the share which I had in the deliverance of our country. I was ready, in- deed, and always shall be ready, to venture my life in defence of her laws and liberties. But there are lengths to which, even for the sake of her laws and liberties, I could never go. I only rebelled against a bad King : there were those who did much more." Marlborough, though not easily discomposed, could not but feel the edge of this sarcasm : William looked displeased ; and the aspect of the whole House was troubled and gloomy. It was resolved by fifty-one votes to forty that the bill should be com- mitted ; and it was committed, but never reported. After many hard struggles between the Whigs headed \>y Shrewsbury and the Tories headed by Caermarthen, it was so much mutilated that it retained little more than its name, and did not seem to those who had introduced it to be worth any further contest.* * Lords' Journals, May 2 and 3, 1690 ; Van Citters, May 2 ; Narcissus Lut- trell's Diary ; Burnet, ii. 44 ; and Lord Dartmouth's note. The changes made by the Committee may be seen on the bill in the Archives of the House of Lords. VOL. III. 33 514 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. The discomfiture of the Whigs was completed by a commu- nication from the King. Caermarthen appeared in the House of Lords bearing in his hand a parchment signed by William. It was an Act of Grace for political offences. Between an Act of Grace originating with the Sovereign and an Act of Indemnity originating with the Estates of the Realm there are some remarkable distinctions. An Act of Indemnity passes through all the stages through which other laws pass, and may, during its progress, be amended by either House. An Act of Grace is received with peculiar marks of respect, is read only once by the Lords and once by the Commons, and must be either rejected altogether or accepted as it stands.* William had not ventured to submit such an Act to the preceding Par- liament. But in the new Parliament he was certain of a majority. The minority gave no trouble. The stubborn spirit which had, during two sessions, obstructed the progress of the Bill of Indemnity had been at length broken by defeats and humiliations. Both Houses stood up uncovered while the Act of Grace was read, and gave their sanction to it without one dis- sentient voice. - There would not have been this unanimity had not a few- great criminals been excluded from the benefits of the amnesty. Foremost among them stood the surviving members of the Hisrh w O O Court of Justice which had sate on Charles the First. With these ancient men were joined the two nameless executioners who had done their office, with masked faces, on the scaffold before the Banqueting House. None knew who they were, or of what rank. It was probable that they had been long dead. Yet it was thought necessary to declare that, if even now, after the lapse of forty-one years, they should be discovered, they would still be liable to the punishment of their great crime. Perhaps it would hardly have been thought necessary to mention these men, if the animosities of the preceding generation had not been rekindled by the recent appearance of Ludlow in England. About thirty of the agents of the tyranny of James were left to * These distinctions wore much discussed at the time. VanCitters, May 20-30, 1600. "WILLIAM AND MART. 515 the law. With these exceptions, all political offences, committed before the day on which the royal signature was affixed to the Act, were covered with a general oblivion.* Even the criminals who were by name excluded had little to fear. Man/ of them were in foreign countries ; and those who were in England were well assured that, unless they committed some new fault, they would not be molested. The Act of Grace the nation owed to William alone ; and it is one of his noblest and purest titles to renown. From the commencement of the civil troubles of the seventeenth century down to the Revolution, every victory gained by either _party had been followed by a sanguinary proscription. When the Roundheads triumphed over the Cavaliers, when the Cavaliers triumphed over the Roundheads, when the fable of the Popish plot gave the ascendency to the Whigs, when the detection of the Rye House Plot transferred the ascendancy to the Tories, blood, and more blood, and still more blood, had flowed. Every great explosion and every great recoil of public feeling had been accompanied by severities which, at the time, the predominant faction loudly applauded, but which on a calm review, history and posterity have condemned. No wise and humane man what- ever may be his political opinions, now mentions without repre- hension the death either of Laud or of Vane, either of Stafford or of Russ*ell. Of the alternate butcheries the last and the worst is that which is inseparably associated with the names of James and Jeffreys. But it assuredly would not have been the last, perhaps it might not have been the worst, if William had not had the virtue and the firmness resolutely to withstand the im- portunity of his most zealous adherents. These men were bent on exacting a terrible retribution for all they had undergone dur- ing seven disastrous years. The scaffold of Sidney, the gibbet of Cornish, the stake at which Elizabeth Gaunt had perished in the flames for the crime of harbouring a fugitive, the porches of the Somersetshire churches surmounted by the skulls and quar- ters of murdered peasants, the holds of those Jamaica ships from which every day the carcass of some prisoner dead of * Stat. 2 W. & M. seas. 1, c. 10. 516 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. thirst and foul air had been flung to the sharks, all these things were fresh in the memory of the party which the Revolution had made, for a time, dominant in the State. Some chiefs of that party had redeemed their necks by paying heavy ransom. Others had languished long in Newgate. Others had starved and shivered, winter after winter, in the garrets of Amsterdam. It was natural that in the day of their power and prosperity they should wish to inflict some part of what they had suffered. During a whole year they pursued their scheme of revenge. They succeeded in defeating Indemnity Bill after Indemnity Bill. Nothing stood between them and 'their victims, but William's immutable resolution that the glory of the great de- liverance which he had wrought should not be sullied by cruelty. His clemency was peculiar to himself. It was not the clemency of an ostentatious man, or of a sentimental man, or of an easy tempered man. It was cold, unconciliating, inflexible. It pro- duced no fine stage effects. It drew on him the savage invec- tives of those whose malevolent passions he refused to satisfy. It won for him no gratitude from those who owed to him for- tune, liberty, and life. While the violent Whigs railed at his lenity, the agents of the fallen tyranny, as soon as they found themselves safe, instead of acknowledging their obligations to him, reproached him in insulting language with the mercy which he had extended to them. His Act of Grace, 'they said, had completely refuted his Declaration. Was it possible to believe that, if there had been any truth in the charges which he had brought against the late government, he would have grant- ed impunity to the guilty ? It was now acknowledged by him- self* under his own hand, that the stories by which he and his friends had deluded the nation and driven away the royal family were mere calumnies devised to serve a turn. The turn had been served ; and the accusations by which he had inflamed the public mind to madness were coolly withdrawn.* But none of these things moved him. He had done well. He had risked his popularity with men who had been his warmest admirers, in * Boger North was one of the many maleconteiits who were never tired of harping on this string. WILLIAM AND MART. 517 order to give repose and security to men by whom his name was never mentioned without a curse. Nor had he conferred a less benefit on those whom he had disappointed of their revenge than on those wham he had protected. If he had saved one faction from a proscription, he had saved the other from the reaction which such a proscription would inevitably have pro- duced. If his people did not justly appreciate his policy, so much the worse for them. He had discharged his duty by them. He feared no obloquy ; and he wanted no thanks. On the twentieth of May the Act of Grace was passed. The King then informed the Houses that his visit to Ireland could no longer be delayed, that he had therefore determined to prorogue them, and that, unless some unexpected emergency made their advice and assistance necessary to him, he should not call them again from their homes till the next winter. "Then," he said, "I hope, by the blessing of God, we shall have a happy meeting." The Parliament had passed an Act providing that, whenever he should go out of England, it should be lawful for Mary to administer the government of the kingdom in his name and her own. It was added that he should nevertheless, during his absence, retain all his authority. Some objections were made to this arrangement. Here, it was said, were two supreme powers in one State. A public functionary might receive dia- metrically opposite orders from the King and the Queen, and might not know which to obey. The objection was, beyond all doubt, speculatively just ; but there was such perfect confidence and affection between the royal pair that no practical inconve- nience was to be apprehended.* As far as Ireland was concerned, the prospects of "William were much more cheering than they had been a few months earlier. The activity with which he had personally urged for- ward the preparations for the next campaign had produced an extraordinary effect. The nerves of the government were new strung. In every department of the military administration the influence of a vigorous mind was perceptible. Abundant * Stat. 2 W. & 31. sess. 1. c. 6 ; Grey's Debates, April 20, May 1, 5, 6, 7, 1690. 518 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. supplies of food, clothing, and medicine, very different in qualir ty from those which Shales had furnished, were sent across Saint George's Channel. A thousand baggage waggons had been made or collected with great expedition ; and, during some weeks, the road between London and Chester was covered with them. Great numbers of recruits were sent to fill the chasms which pestilence had made in the English ranks. Fresh regiments from Scotland, Cheshire, Lancashire, and Cumber- land had landed in the Bay of Belfast. The uniforms and arms of the new comers clearly indicated the potent influence of the master's eye. With the British battalions were inter- spersed several hardy bands of German and Scandinavian mer- cenaries. Before the end of May the English force in Ulster amounted to thirty thousand fighting men. A few more troops and an immense quantity of military stores were on board of a fleet which lay in the estuary of the Dee, and which was ready to weigh anchor as soon as the King was on board.* James ought to have made an equally good use of the time during which his army had been in winter quarters. Strict discip- line and regular drilling might, in the interval between November and May, have turned the athletic and enthusiastic peasants who were assembled under his standard into good soldiers. But the opportunity was lost. The Court of Dublin was, during that season of inaction, busied with dice and claret, love letters and challenges. The aspect of the capital was indeed not very- brilliant. The whole number of coaches which could be mus- tered there, those of the King and of the French legation in- cluded did not amount to forty, f But though there was little splendour there was much dissoluteness. Grave Roman Catho- lics shook their heads and said that the Castle did not look like the palace of a King who gloried in being the champion of the Church. | The military administration was as deplorable as * Story's Impartial History ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. t Avaux, Jan. 15-25, IC'JU. t Macariae Excidium. This most curious work has been recently edited with great care and diligence by Mr. O'Calla^han. I owe so much to his learning and Industry that I most readily excuse the national partiality which sometimes, I eauuot but think, perverts his judgment. When 1 quote the Hacarise Excidium, WILLIAM AND MARY. 519 ever. The cavalry indeed was, by the exertions of some gal- lant officers, kept in a high state of efficiency. But a regiment of infantry differed in nothing but name from a large gang of Ranparees. Indeed a gang of Rapparees gave less annoyance to peaceable citizens, and more annoyance to the enemy, than a regiment of infantry. Avaux strongly represented, in a me- morial which he delivered to James, the abuses which made the Irish foot a curse and a scandal to Ireland. Whole companies, said the ambassador, quit their colours on the line of march and wander to right and left pillaging and destroying : the soldier takes no care of his arms : the captain never troubles himself to ascertain whether the arms are in good order : the consequence is that one man in every three has lost his musket, and that another man in every three has a musket that will not go off. Avaux adjured the King to prohibit marauding, to give orders that the troops should be regularly exercised, and to punish every officer who suffered his men to neglect their weapons and accoutrements. If these things were done, His Majesty might hope to have, in the approaching spring, an army with which the enemy would be unable to contend. This was good advice : but James was so far from taking it that he would hardly lis- ten to it with patience. Before he had heard eight lines read he flew into a passion and accused the ambassador of exaggera- tion. " This paper, Sir," said Avaux, " is not written to be published. It is meant'solely for Your Majesty's information ; and, in a paper meant solely for Your Majesty's information, flattery and disguise would be out of place : but I will not per- sist in reading what is so disagreeable." " Go on," said James very angrily ; " I will hear the whole." He gradually became calmer, took the memorial, and promised to adopt some of the suggestions which it contained. But his promise was soon for- gotten.* His financial administration was of a piece with his military administration. His one fiscal resource was robbery, direct or indirect. Every Protestant who had remained in any part of I always quote the Latin text. The English version is, I am convinced, merely a translation from the Latin, and a very careless and imperfect translation. * Avaux, Kov. 14-24, 1G89. 520 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. the three southern provinces of Ireland was robbed directly, by the simple process of taking money out of his strong box, drink out of his cellars, fuel from his turf stack, and clothes from his wardrobe. He was robbed indirectly by a new issue of count- ers, smaller in size and baser in material than any which had yet borne the image and superscription of James. Even brass had begun to be scarce at Dublin ; and it was necessary to ask assistance from Lewis, who charitably bestowed on his ally an old cracked piece of cannon to be coined into crowns and shil- lings.* But the French king had determined to send over succours of a very different kind. He proposed to take into his own ser- vice, and to form by the best discipline then known in the world, four Irish regiments. They were to be commanded by Macar- thy, who had been severely wounded and taken prisoner at New- ton Butler. His wounds had been healed; and he had regained his liberty by violating his parole. This disgraceful breach of faith he had made more disgraceful by paltry tricks and sophis- tical excuses which would have become a Jesuit better than a gentleman and a soldier. Lewis was willing that the Irish reg- iments should be sent to him in rags and unarmed, and insisted only that the men should be stout, and that the officers should not be bankrupt traders and discarded lacqueys, but, if possible, men of good family who had seen service. In return for these troops, who were in number not quite four thousand, he under- took to send to Ireland between seven and eight thousand ex- cellent French infantry, who were likely in a day of battle to be of more use than all the kernes of Leinster, Munster, and Con- naught together.! * Louvois writes to Avaux, -^ ^-^1689-90 : " Comme le Roy a veu par vos let- tres que le Roy d'Angleterra craignoit de manquer de cuivre pour faire de la moimoye, Sa Majeste a donn6 onlre que 1'on mist sur le bastiment que poriera cette lettre une piece de canon du calibre de deux qui eat eventee, de laquelle ceux qui travailleiit & la moimoye du Roy d'Angleterre pourront s'e servir pour coiitinuer a faire de la moimoye." t Louvois to Avaux, Nov. 1-11, 1889 The force sent by Lewis to Ireland ap- pears by the lists at the French War Office to have amounted 1 to seven thousand two hundred and ninety-one men of all ranks. At the French War Office is a letter from Marshal d'Estrees who saw the four Irish regiments soon after they had lauded at Brest. He describes them as " mal chausses, mal vetus, et u'ayaiit WILLIAM AND MART. 521 One great error he committed. The army which he was sending to assist James, though small indeed when compared with the army of Flanders or with the army of the Rhine, was destined for a service on which the fate of Europe might de- pend, and ought therefore to have heen commanded hy a gen- eral of eminent abilities. There was no want of such generals in the French service. But James and his Queen begged hard for Lauzun, and carried this point against the strong represen- tations of Avaux, against the advice of Louvois, and against the judgment of Lewis himself. When Lauzun went to the cabinet of Louvois to receive in- structions, the wise minister held language which showed how little confidence he felt in the vain and eccentric knight errant. " Do not, for God's sake, suffer yourself to be. hurried away by your desire of fighting. Put all your glory in tiring the Eng- lish out ; and, above all things, maintain strict discipline."! Not only was the appointment of Lauzun in itself a bad appointment : but, in order that one man might fill a post for which he was unfit, it was necessary to remove two men from posts for which they were eminently fit. Immoral and hard- hearted as Rosen and Avaux were, Rosen was a skilful captain, and Avaux was a skilful politician. Though it is not probable that they would have been able to avert the doom of Ireland, it is probable that they might have been able to protract the con- test ; and it was evidently for the interest of France that the contest should be protracted. But it would have been an affront to the old general to put him under the orders of Lauzun ; and between the ambassador and Lauzun there was such an enmity that they could not be expected to act cordially together. Both Rosen and Avaux, therefore, were, with many soothing assur- ances of royal approbation and favour, recalled to France. They sailed from Cork early in the spring by the fleet which had con- point d'unifonne dans leurs habits, si ce n'est qu'ilssont tous fort mauv.iis." A very exact account of Maearthy's breach of parole will be found in Mr. O'Calla- ghan's History of the Irish Brigades. I am sorry that a writer to whom I owe so much should try to vindicate conduct which, as described by himself, was in the highest degree dishonourable. t Lauzuu to Louvois, ?-*Z_! and June 16-26, 1690, at the French War Office, 522 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. veyed Lauzun thither.* Lauzun had no sooner landed than he found that, though he had been long expected, nothing had been prepared for his reception. No lodgings had been provided for his men, no place of security for his stores, no horses, no car- riages.f His troops had to undergo the hardships of a long march through a desert before they arrived at Dublin. At Dublin, indeed, they found tolerable accommodation. They were billeted on Protestants, lived at free quarters, had plenty of bread, and threepence a day. Lauzun was appointed Com- mander in Chief of the Irish army and took up his residence in the Castle. $ His salary was the same with that of the Lord Lieutenant, eight thousand Jacobuses, equivalent to ten thous- and pounds sterling, a year. This sum James offered to pay, not in the brass which bore his own effigy, but in French gold. But Lauzun, among whose faults avarice had no place, refused to fill his own coffers from an. almost empty treasury.! On him and on the Frenchmen who accompanied him the misery of the Irish people and the imbecility of the Irish ad- ministration produced an effect which they found it difficult to describe. Lauzun wrote to Louvois that the Court and the whole kingdom were in a state not to be imagined by a person who had always lived in happier countries. It was, he said, a chaos, such as he had read of in the book of Genesis. The whole business of all the public functionaries was to quarrel with each other, and to plunder the government and the people. After he had been about a month at the Castle, he declared that he would not go through such another month for all the world. His ablest officers confirmed his testimony. || One of them, indeed, was so unjust as to represent the people of Ireland, not merely as ignorant and idle, which they were, but as hopelessly stupid and unfeeling, which they assuredly were not. The * See the later letters of Avaux. t Avaux to Louvois, March 14-24, 1C90 ; Lauzun to Louvois, ^^L?!' April 2. t Story's Impartial History ; Lauzun to Louvois, May 20-30, IGiiO. Lauzun to Louvois, ^J? s i 1690. June 7, || Lauzun to Louvois, April 2-12, May 10-20, 1690. La Hoguette, who held the rank of Marechal de Cainp, wrote to Louvois to the same effect about the same time. WILLIAM AND MART. 523 English policy, he said, had so completely brutalised them that they could hardly be called human beings. They were insen- sible to praise and blame, to promises and threats. And yet it was pity of them : for they were physically the finest race of men in the world.* By this time Schomberg had opened the campaign auspi- ciously. He had with little difficulty taken Charlemont, the last important fastness which the Irish occupied in Ulster. But the great work of reconquering the three southern provinces of the island he deferred till William should arrive. "William mean- while was busied in making arrangements for the government and defence of England during his absence. He well knew that the Jacobites were on the alert. They had not till very lately been an united and organised faction. There had been, to use Melfort's phrase, numerous gangs, which were all in communication with James at Dublin Castle, or with Mary of INIodena at Saint Germains, but which had no connection with each other and were unwilling to trust each other.t But since it had been known that the usurper was about to cross the sea, and that his sceptre would be left in a female hand, these gangs had been drawing close together, and had begun to form one extensive confederacy. Clarendon, who had refused the oaths, and Ailesbury, who had dishonestly taken them, were among the chief traitors. Dartmouth, though he had sworn allegiance to the sovereigns who were in possession, was one of their most active enemies, and undertook what may be called the maritime department of the plot. His mind was constantly occupied by schemes, disgraceful to an English seaman, for the destruction of the English fleets and arsenals. He was in close communi- cation with some naval officers, who, though they served the new government, served it sullenly and with half a heart ; and * " La politique des Anglois a etc de tenir ces peuples cy comme des esclaves, et si bus qu'il ne leur estoit pus permis d'apprendre a lire et a eVrire. Cela lea a rendu si bestes qu'ils n'ont presque point d'humanite. Kien ne les esmeut. Us sont peu seiisibles a 1'honneur ; et les menaces ne les estonnent point. L'in- terest meme ne les peut engager au travail. Ce sont pourtant les gens du monde lee mieux fails." Desgrigny to Louvois, -*- v ~: 1690. t See Melfort's Letters to James written in October 1689. They are among the Nairne Papers, and were printed by Macphersou. 524 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. he flattered himself that by promising these men ample rewards, and by artfully inflaming the jealous animosity with which they regarded the Dutch flag, he should prevail on them to desert and to carry their ships into some French or Irish port.* The conduct of Penn was scarcely less scandalous. He was a zealous and busy Jacobite ; and his new way of life was even more unfavourable than his late way of life had been to moral purity. It was hardly possible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a courtier : but it was utterly impossible to be at once a consistent Quaker and a conspirator. It is melancholy to relate that Penn, while professing to consider even defensive war as sinful, did everything in his power to bring a foreign army into the heart of his own country. He wrote to inform James that the adherents of the Prince of Orange dreaded noth- ing so much as an appeal to the sword, and that, if England were now invaded from France or from Ireland, the number of Royalists would appear to be greater than ever. Avaux thought this letter so important, that he sent a translation of it to Lewis. f A good effect, the shrewd ambassador wrote, had been produced, by this and similar communications, on the mind of King James. His Majesty was at last convinced that he could recover his dominions only sword in hand. It is a curious fact that it should have been reserved for the great preacher of peace to produce this conviction in the mind of the old tyrant.^ Penn's proceed- * Life of James, ii. 443, 450 ; and Trials of Ash ton and Preston. t Avaux wrote thus to Lewis on the 5th of June 1689 : " 11 nous est venu des nouvelles assez considerables d'Angleterre et d'Escosse. Je me donne 1'hoiineur d'eii envoyer des memoires a vostre Majesl6, tels que je les ay receus du Roy de la Grande Bretagne. Le commencement des nouvelles dattees d'Angleterre est la copie d'une lettre de M. Pen, que j'ay veue en original." The Mdmoire des Nouvelles d'Angleterre et d'Escosse, which was sent with this despatch, begins with the following sentences, which must therefore have been part of Penn's letter : " Le Prince d'Orange commence d'estre fort degoutte de 1'humeur des Anglois ; et la face des choses change bien viste, selon la nature des insulaires ; et sa sante est fort mauvaise. II y a un nuage qui commence a su former au nord des deux royaumes, oil le Roy a beaucoup d'amis, ce qui donne beaucoup d'in- quietude aux principaux amis du Prince d'Orange, qui estant riches, commencent a estre persuadez que ce sera 1'espee qui decidera de leur sort, ce qu'ils ont tant tach6 d'eviter. Us apprehendent tine invasion d'Irlande et de France ; et en ce cas le Roy aura plus d'amis que jamais." t " Le bon effet, Sire, que ces lettres d'Escosse et d'Angleterre ont produit, sst qu'elles ont enfin persua<14 le Roy d'Angleterre qu'il ne reconvrera ses estata que les armes a la main ; et ce n'est pas peu de 1'eu avoir coiivauicu." "WILLIAM AND MART. 525 ings had not escaped the observation of the government. "War- rants had been out against him ; and he had been taken into custody ; but the evidence against him had not been such as would support a charge of high treason : he had, as, with all his faults, he deserved to have, many friends in every party : he therefore soon regained his liberty, and returned to his plots.* But the chief conspirator was Richard Graham, Viscount Preston, who had, in the late reign, been Secretary of State. Though a peer in Scotland, he was only a baronet in England. He had, indeed, received from Saint Germains an English pat- ent of nobility, but the patent bore'a date posterior to that flight which the Convention had pronounced an abdication. The Lords had, therefore, not only refused to admit him to a share of their privileges, but had sent him to prison for presuming to call him- self one of the order. He had, however, by humbling himself and by withdrawing his claim, obtained his liberty. f Though the submissive language which he had condescended to use on this occasion did not indicate a spirit prepared for martyrdom, he was regarded by his party, and by the world in general, as a man of courage and honour. He still retained the seals of his office, and was still considered by the adherents of indefeasible hereditary right as the real Secretary of State. He was in high favour with Lewis, at whose court he had formerly resided, and had, since the Revolution, been entrusted by the French Gov- ernment with considerable sums of money for political purposes, t While Preston was consulting in the capital with the other heads of the faction, the rustic Jacobites were laying in arms, holding musters, and forming themselves into companies, troops, and regiments. There were alarming symptoms in "Worcester- shire. In Lancashire many gentlemen had received commissions signed by James, called themselves colonels and captains, and * Van Citters to the States General, March 1-11, 1689. Van Citters calls Penn " den bekenden Archquaker." t SeeTiis trial in the Collection of State Trials, and the Lord*' Journals of Nov. 11. 12 and 27, 1689. t One remittance of two thousand pistoles is mentioned in a letter of Croi?sy to Avaux, Feb. 16-26. 1C89. James, in a letter dated Jan. 26, 1689, directs Pres- ton to consider himself as still Secretary, notwithstanding Melfort's appoint- ment. 526 HISTORY OF EXGLAXD. made out long lists of noncommissioned officers and privates. Letters from Yorkshire brought news that large bodies of men, who seemed to have met for no good purpose, had been seen on the moors near Knaresborough. Letters from Newcastle gave an account of a great match at football which had been played 'in Northumberland, and was suspected to have been a pretext for a gathering of the disaffeted. In the crowd, it was said, were a hundred and fifty horsemen well mounted and armed, of whom many were Papists.* Meantime packets of letters full of treason were constantly passing and repassing between Kent and Picardy, and between Wales and Ireland. Some of the messengers .were honest fana- tics : but others were mere mercenaries, and trafficked in the secrets of w-hich they were the bearers. Of these double traitors the most remarkable was William Fuller. This man has himself told us that, when he was very young, he fell in with a pamphlet which contained an account \ of the flagitious life and horrible death of Dangerfield. The boy's imagination was set on fire : he devoured the book : he almost got it by heart ; and he was soon seized, and ever after haunted, by a strange presentiment that his fate would resemble that of the wretched adventurer whose history he had so eager- ly read.f It might have been supposed that the prospect of dying in Newgate, with a back flayed and an eye knocked out, would not have seemed very attractive. But experience proves that there are some distempered minds for which notoriety, even when accompanied with pain and shame, has an irresistible fascination. Animated by this loathsome ambition, Fuller equalled, and perhaps surpassed, his model. He was bred a Koman Catholic, and was page to Lady Melfort, when Lady * Narcissus Luttrell's Diary ; Commons' Journals, May 14, 15, 20, 1690 ; Kingston's True History, 1C97. t The Whole Life of Mr. William Fuller, being an Impartial Account of his Birth, Education, Relations and Introduction into the service of the late King James and his Queen, together with a True Discovery of the Intrigues for which he lies now confined ; as also of the Persons that employed and assisted him therein, with his Hearty Repentance for the Misdemeanours he did in the late Reign, and all others whom he hath injured ; impartially writ by Himself during his Confinement in the Queen's Bench, 1703. Of coarse I shall use this narrative with caution. WILLIAM AND MART. 527 Melfort shone at Whitehall as one of the loveliest women in the train of Mary of Modena. After the Revolution, he fol- lowed his mistress to France, was repeatedly employed in deli- cate and perilous commissions, and was thought at Saint Ger- mains to be a devoted servant of the House of Stuart. In truth, however, he had, in the course of ooe of his expeditions to London, sold himself to the new government, and had ab- jured the faith in which he had been brought up. The honour, if it is to be so called, of turning him from a worthless Papist into a worthless Protestant he ascribed, with characteristic im- pudence, to the lucid reasoning and blameless life of Tillotson. In the spring of 1690, Mary of Modena wished to send to her correspondents in London somehighly important despatches. As these despatches were too bulky to be concealed in the clothes of a single messenger, it was necessary to employ two confiden- tial persons. Fuller was one. The other was a zealous young Jacobite named Crone. Before they set out, they received full instructions from the Queen herself. Not a scrap of paper was to be detected about them by an ordinary Search ; but their buttons contained letters written in invisible ink. The pair proceeded to Calais. The governor of that town furnished them with a boat, which, under cover of the night, set them on the low marshy coast of Kent, near the lighthouse of Dungeness. They walked to a farmhouse, procured horses, and took different roads to London. Fuller hastened to the palace at Kensington, and delivered the documents with which he was charged into the King's hand. The first letter which William unrolled seemed to contain only florid compliments : but a pan of charcoal was lighted : a liquor well known to the diplomatists of that age was applied to the paper : an unsavoury steam filled the closet ; and lines full of grave meaning began to appear. The first thing to be done was to secure Crone. He had unfortunately had time to deliver his letters before he was caught ; but a snare was laid for him into which he easily fell. In truth the sincere Jacobites were generally wretched plotters. There was among them an unusually large proper- 528 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. tion of sots, braggarts, and babblers ; and Crone was one of these. Had he been wise, he would have shunned places of public resort, kept strict guard over his tongue, and stinted him- self to one bottle at a meal. He was found by the messengers of the government at a tavern table in Gracechurch Street, swallowing bumpers to the health of King James, and ranting about the coming restoration, the French fleet, and the thou- sands of honest Englishmen who were awaiting the signal to rise in arms for their rightful Sovereign. He was carried to the Secretary's office at Whitehall. He at first seemed to be confident and at his ease ; but when, among the bystanders, Fuller appeared at liberty, and in a fashionable garb, with a sword, the prisoner's courage fell ; and he was scarcely able to articulate.* The news that Fuller had turned king's evidence, that Crone had been arrested, and that important letters from Saint Germains were in the hands of William, flew fast through London, and spread dismay among all who were conscious of guilt, f It was true that the testhnony of one witness, even if that witness had been more respectable than Fuller, was not legally sufficient to convict any person of high treason. But Fuller had so man- aged matters that several witnesses could be produced to cor- roborate his evidence against Crone ; and, if Crone, under the strong terror of death, should imitate Fuller's example, the heads of all the chiefs of the conspiracy would be at the mercy of the government. The spirits of the Jacobites rose, however, when it was known that Crone, though repeatedly interrogated by those who had him in their power, and though assured that nothing but a frank confession could save his life, had resolute- ly continued silent. What effect a verdict of Guilty and the near prospect of the gallows might produce on him remained to be seen. His accomplices were by no means willing that his fortitude should be tried by so severe a test. They therefore employed numerous artifices, legal and illegal, to avert a con- viction. A woman named Clifford, with whom he had lodged, * Fuller's Life of himself. t Clarendon's Diary, March 6, 1690; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary. WILLIAM AND MART. 529 and who was one of the most active and cunning agents of the Jacobite faction, was entrusted with the duty of keeping him steady to the cause, and of rendering to him services from which scrupulous or timid agents might have shrunk. When the dreaded day came, Fuller was too ill to appear in the witness box, and the trial was consequently postponed. He asserted that his malady was not natural, that a noxious drug had been administered to him in a dish of porridge, that his nails were discoloured, that his hair came off, and that able physicians pro- nounced him poisoned. But such stories, even when they rest on authority much better than his, ought to be received with very great distrust. While Crone n r as awaiting his trial, another agent of the Court of Saint Gennains, named Tempest, was seized on the road between Dover and London, and was found to be the bearer of numerous letters addressed to malccontents in Eng- land.* Every day it became more plain that the State was surrounded by dangers ; and yet it was absolutely necessary that, at this conjuncture, the Chief of the State should quit his post. William, with painful anxiety, such as he alone was able to conceal under an appearance of stoical serenity, prepared to take his departure. Mary was in agonies of grief ; and her distress affected him more than was imagined by those who judged of his heart by his demeanour.f He knew too that he was about to leave her surrounded by difficulties with which her habits had not qualified her to contend. She would be in con- stant need of wise and upright counsel ; and where was such counsel to be found ? There were indeed among his servants many able men, and a few virtuous men. But, even when he was present, their political and personal animosities had too often made both their abilities and their virtues useless to him. What chance was there that the gentle Mary would be able to restrain that party spirit and that emulation which had been but * Clarendon's Diary, May 10, 1690. t He wrote to Portland, " Je plains la povre reine, qui eat en des terribles afflictions." VOL. HI. 34 530 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. very imperfectly kept in order by her resolute and politic hus- band ? If the interior cabinet which was to assist the Queen were composed exclusively either of Whigs or of Tories, half the nation would be disgusted. Yet, if Whigs and Tories were mixed, it was certain that there would be constant dissension. Such was William's situation that he had only a choice of evils. All these difficulties were increased by the conduct of Shrews- bury. The character of this man is a curious study. He seemed to be the petted favourite both of nature and of fortune. Illus- trious birth, exalted rank, ample possessions, fine parts, exten- sive acquirements, an agreeable person, manners singularly graceful and engaging, combined to make him an object of admiration and envy. But, with all these advantages, he had some moral and intellectual peculiarities which made him a torment to himself, and to all connected with him. His con- duct at the time of the Revolution had given the world a high opinion, not merely of his patriotism, but of his courage, energy, and decision. It should seem, however, that youthful enthusi- asm and the exhilaration produced by public sympathy and ap- plause had, on that occasion, raised him above himself. Scarce- ly any other part of his life was of a piece with that splendid commencement. He had hardly become Secretary of State when it appeared that his nerves were too weak for such a post. The daily toil, the heavy responsibility, the failures, the mortifica- tions, the obloquy, which are inseparable from power, broke his spirit, soured his temper, and impaired his health. To such natures as his the sustaining power of high religious principle seems to be peculiarly necessary ; and unfortunately Shrewsbury had, in the act of shaking off the yoke of that superstition in which he had been brought up, liberated himself also from more salutary bands which might perhaps have braced his too delicately constituted mind into steadfastness and uprightness. Destitute of such support, he was, with great abilities, a weak man, and though endowed with many amiable and attractive quali- ties, could not be called an honest man. For his own happiness, he should either have been much better or much worse. As it WILLIAM AND MART. 531 was, he never knew either that noble peace of mind which is the reward of rectitude, or that abject peace of mind which springs from impudence and insensibility. Few people who have had so little power to resist temptation have suffered so cruelly from remorse and shame. To a man of this temper the situation of a minister of state during the year which followed the Revolution must have been constant torture. The difficulties by which the government was beset on all sides, the malignity of its enemies, the unrea- sonableness of its friends, the virulence with which the hostile factions fell on each other and on every mediator who attempted to part them, might indeed have discouraged a more resolute spirit. Before Shrewsbury had been six months in office, he had completely lost heart and head. He began to address to Wil- liam letters which it is difficult to imagine that a prince so strong- minded can have read without mingled compassion and contempt. "I am sensible," such was the constant burden of these epistles, " that I am unfit for my place. I cannot exert my- self. I am not the same man that I was half a year ago. My health is giving way. My mind is on the rack. My memory is failing. Nothing but quiet and retirement can restore me." William returned friendly and soothing answers ; and for a time these answers calmed the troubled mind of his minister.* But at length the dissolution, the general election, the change in the Commissions of Peace and Lieutenancy, and finally the debates on the two Abjuration Bills, threw Shrewsbury into a state bordering on distraction. He was angry with the Whigs for using the King ill, and still more angry with the King for show- ing favour to the Tories. At what moment and by what in- fluence the unhappy man was induced to commit a treason, the consciousness of which threw a dark shade over all his remaining years, is not accurately known. But it is highly probable that his mother, who, though the most abandoned of women, had great power over him, took a fatal advantage of some unguarded hour, when he was irritated by finding his advice slighted, and that of Danby and Nottingham preferred. * See the Letters of Shrewsbury in Coxe's Correspondence, Part I. chap. i. 532 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. She was still a member of that Church which her son had quit- ted, and *may have thought that, by reclaiming him from rebellion, she might make some atonement for the violation of her marriage vow and the murder of her lord.* What is cer- tain is that, before the end of the spring of 1690, Shrewsbury had offered his services to James, and that James had accepted them. One proof of the sincerity of the convert was demanded. He must resign the seals which he had taken from the hand of the usurper, f It is probable that Shrewsbury had scarcely com- mitted his fault when he began to repent of it. But he had not strength of mind to stop short in the path of evil. Loathing his own baseness, dreading a detection which must be fatal to his honour, afraid to go forward, afraid to go back, he under- went tortures of which it is impossible to think without com- miseration. The true cause of his distress was as yet a profound secret : but his mental struggles and changes of purpose were generally known, and furnished the town, during some weeks, with topics of conversation. One night, when he was actually setting out in a state of great excitement for the palace, with the seals in his hand, he was induced by Burnet to defer his resignation for a few hours. Some days later the eloquence of Tillotson was employed for the same purpose. $ Three or four times the Earl laid the ensigns of his office on the table of the royal closet, and was three or four times induced, by the kind expostulations of the master whom he was conscious of having wronged, to take them up and carry them away. Thus the resignation was deferred till the eve of the King's departure. By that time agitation had thrown Shrewsbury into a low fever. Bentinck, who made a last effort to persuade him to retain office, found him in bed and too ill for conversation. The * That Lady Shrewsbury was a Jacobite, and did her best to make her son so, Is certain from Lloyd's Paper of May 1694, which is among the Kairne MSS., and was printed by Macpherson. t This is proved by a few words in a paper which James, in November 1C92, laid before the French government. " II y a," says he, " le Comte de Shrusbery, qui, dtant Secretaire d'Etat du Prince d'Orange, s'est defait de sa charge par mon ordre," One copy of this most valuable paper is in, the Archives of tho French Foreign Oflice. Another is among the Nairne MS.S. in the Bodleian Library. A translation into English will be found in Macpherson's collection. t Buniet, ji, 45. Shrewsbury to Somers, Sept. 22, 1C97. WILLIAM AND MART. 533 resignation so often tendered was at length accepted, and dur- ing some months Nottingham was the only Secretary of State. It was no small addition to William's trouble that, at such a moment, his government should be weakened by this defection. He tried, however, to do his best with the materials which re- mained to him, and finally selected nine privy councillors, by whose advice he enjoined Mary to be guided. Four of these, Devonshire, Dorset, Mon mouth, and Edward Russell, were Whigs. The other five, Caermarthen, Pembroke, Nottingham, Marlborough, and Lowther, were Tories.* William ordered the nine to attend him at the office of the Secretary of State. When they were assembled, he came lead- ing in the Queen, desired them to be seated, and addressed to them a few earnest and weighty words. " She wants experience," he said : " but I hope that, by choosing you to be her counsellors, I have supplied that defect. I put my kingdom into your hands. Nothing foreign or domestic shall be kept secret from you. I implore you to be diligent and to be united."f In private he told his wife what he thought of the characters of the Nine ; and it should seem, from her letters to him, that there were few of the number for whom he expressed any high esteem. Marlborough was to be her guide in military affairs, and was to command the troops in England. Russell, who was Admiral of the Blue, and had been rewarded for the service which he had done at the time of the Revolution with the lu- crative place of Treasurer of the Navy, was well fitted to be her adviser on all questions relating to the fleet. But Caer- marthen was designated as the person on whom, in case of any difference of opinion in the council, she ought chiefly to rely. Caermarthen's sagacity and experience were unquestionable : his principles, indeed, were lax : but if there was any person Among the State Poems (vol. ii. p. 211) will be found a piece which some ignorant editor has entitled, " A Satyr written when the K went to Flanders and left nine Lords Justices." I have a manuscript copy of this satire, evidently contemporary, and hearing the date 1690. It is indeed evident at a glance that the nine persons satirised are the nine members of the interior council which William appointed to assist Mary when he went to Ireland. Some of them never were Lords Justices. t From a narrative written by Lowther, which is among the Mackintosh MSS. 534 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. in existence to whom he was likely to be true, that person was Mary. He had long been in a peculiar manner her friend and servant : he had gained a high place in her favour by bringing about her marriage ; and he had, in the Convention, carried his zeal for her interest to a length which she had herself blamed as excessive. There was, therefore, every reason to hope that he would serve her at this critical conjuncture with sincere good will.* One of her nearest kinsmen, on the other hand, was one of her bitterest enemies. The evidence which was in the possession of the government proved beyond dispute that Clarendon was deeply concerned in the Jacobite schemes of insurrection. But the Queen was most unwilling that her kindred should be harsh- ly treated ; and William, remembering through what ties she had broken, and what reproaches she had incurred, for his sake, readily gave her uncle's life and liberty to her intercession. But before the King set out for Ireland, he spoke seriously to Rochester. " Your brother has been plotting against me. I am sure of it. I have the proofs under his own hand. I was urged to leave him out of the Act of Grace ; but I would not do what would have given so much pain to the Queen. For her sake I forgive the past : but my Lord Clarendon will do well to be cautious for the future. If not, he will find that these are no jesting matters." Rochester communicated the admonition to Clarendon. Clarendon, who was in constant correspondence with Dublin and Saint Germains, protested that his only wish was to be quiet, and that, though he felt a scruple about the oaths, the existing government had not a more obedient subject than he purposed to be.f Among the letters which the government had intercepted was one from James to Penn. That letter, indeed, was not- legal evidence to prove that the person to whom it was addressed had been guilty of high treason : but it raised suspicions which are now known to have been well founded. Penn was brought before the Privy Council, and interrogated. He said very truly See Mary's Letters to William, published by Dalrymple. i Clarendon's Diary, May 30, 1690. WILLIAM AND MART. 535 that he could not prevent people from writing to him, and that he was not accountable for what they might write him. He acknowledged that he was bound to the late King by ties of grati- tude and affection which no change of fortune could dissolve. " I should be glad to do him any service in his private affairs : but I owe a sacred duty to my country ; and therefore I was never so wicked as even to think of endeavouring to bring him back." This was a falsehood ; and William was probably aware that it was so. He was unwilling however to deal harshly with a man who had many titles to respect, and who was not likely to be a very formidable plotter. He therefore declared himself satisfied, and proposed to discharge the prisoner. Some of the Privy Councillors, however, remonstrated ; and Penii was re- quired to give bail.* On the day before William's departure, he called Burnet into bis closet, and, in firm but mournful language, spoke of the dan- gers which on every side menaced the realm, of the fury of the contending factions, and of the evil spirit which seemed to pos- sess too many of the clergy. " But my trust is in God. I will go through with my work or perish in it. Only I cannot help feeling for the poor Queen ; and twice he repeated with un- wonted tenderness, " the poor Queen." " If you love me," he added, " wait on her often, and give her what help you can. As for me, but for one thing, I should enjoy the prospect of being on horseback and under canvass again. For I am sure that I am fitter to direct a campaign than to manage your Houses of Lords and Commons. But though I know that I am in the path of duty, it is hard on my wife that her father and I must be opposed to each other in the field. God send that no harm may happen to him. Let me have your prayers, Doctor." Burnet retired greatly moved, and doubtless put up, with no common fervour, those prayers for which his master had asked, f On the following day, the fourth of June, the King set out for Ireland. Prince George had offered his services, had equip- ped himself at great charge, and fully expected to be com- plimuuted with a seat in the royal coach. But William, who * Gerard Croese. t Buniet, ii. 46. 53(5 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. promised himself little pleasure or advantage from His Royal Higlmess's conversation, and who seldom stood on ceremony, took Portland for a travelling companion, and never once, during the whole of that eventful campaign, seemed to be aware of the Prince's existence, f George, if left to himself, would hardly have noticed the affront. But, though he was too dull to feel, his wife felt for him ; arid her resentment was studiously kept alive hy mischiefmakers of no common dexterity. On this, as on many other occasions, the infirmities of William's temper proved seriously detrimental to the great interests of which he was the guardian. His reign would have been far more prosperous if, with his own courage, capacity, and eleva- tion of mind, he had had a little of the easy good humour and politeness of his uncle Charles. In four days the King arrived at Chester, where a fleet of transports was awaiting the signal for sailirg. He em- barked on the eleventh of June, and was convoyed across Saint George's Channel by a squadron of men o war under the command of Sir Cloudesley Shovel.* The month which followed William's departure from Lon- don was one of the most eventful and anxious months in the whole history of England. A few hours after he had set out, Crone was brought to the bar of the Old Bailey. A great array of judges was on the bench. Fuller had recovered sufficiently to make his appearance in court ; and the trial proceeded. The Jacobites had been indefatigable in their efforts to ascertain the political opinions of the persons whose names were on the jury list. So many were challenged that there was some difficulty in making up the number of twelve ; and among the twelve was one on whom the malecontents thought that they could depend. Nor. were they altogether mistaken ; for this man held out against his eleven companions all night and half the next day ; and he would probably have starved them into submission had not Mrs. Clifford, who was in league with him, been caught * Tlie Duchess of Marlborough's Vindication. t London Gazettes. June 5. 12, Ifi, 1690 ; Hop to the States General from Chester, June 9-19. Hop attended William to Ireland as envoy from the States. WILLIAM AND MARY. 537 throwing sweetmeats to him through the window. His supplies having been cut oif, he yielded ; and a verdict of Guilty, which, it was said, cost two of the jurymen their lives, was returned. A motion in arrest of judgment was instantly made, on the ground that a Latin word endorsed on the back of the indictment was incorrectly spelt. The objection was undoubtedly frivolous. Jeffreys would have at once overruled it with a torrent of curses, and would have proceeded to the most agreeable part of his duty* that of describing to the prisoner the whole process of half hang- ing, disembowelling, mutilating and quartering. But Holt and his brethren remembered that they were now for the first time since the Revolution trying a culprit on a charge of high trea- son. It was therefore desirable to show, in a manner not to be misunderstood, that a new era had commenced, and 'that the tribunals would in future rather err on the side of humanity than imitate the cruel haste and levity with which Cornish had, when pleading for his life, been silenced by servile judges. The passing of the sentence was therefore deferred : a day was ap- pointed for considering the point raised by Croue ; and counsel were assigned to argue in his behalf. u This would not have been done, Mr. Crone," said the Lord Chief Justice significant- ly, "in either of the last two reigns." After a full hearing, the Bench unanimously pronounced the error to be immaterial ; and the prisoner was condemned to death. He owned that his trial had been fair, thanked the judges for their patience, and besought them to intercede for him with the Queen.* He was soon informed that his fate was in his own hands. The government was willing to spare him if he would earn his pardon by a full confession. The struggle in his mind was ter- rible and doubtful. At one time Mrs. Clifford, who had access to his cell, reported to the Jacobite chiefs that he was in a great agony. He could not*die, he said : he was too young to be a martyr.f The next morning she found him cheerful and reso- Inte4 He held out till the eve of the day fixed for his execu- * Clarendon's Diary, June 7 and 12, 1690 ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary ; Baden, the Dutch Secretary of Legation, to Van Citters, June 10-20; Fuller's Life of himself ; Welwood's Mercurius Reformatus, June 11, 1690. t Clarendon's Diary, June 8, 1G90. t Clarendon's Diary, June 10 538 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. X tion. Then he sent to ask for an interview with the Secretary of State. Nottingham went to Newgate : but, before he ar- rived, Crone had changed his mind and was determined to say nothing. " Then," said Nottingham, " I shall see you no more ; for tomorrow will assuredly be your last day." But after Not- tingham had departed Monmouth repaired to the gaol, and flat- tered himself that he had shaken the prisoner's resolution. At a very late hour that night came a respite for a week.* The week however passed away without any disclosure : the gallows and quartering block were ready at Tyburn : the sledge and axe were at the door of Newgate : the crowd was thick all up Hoi- born Hill and along the Oxford road ; when a messenger brought another respite, and Crone, instead of being dragged to the place of execution, was conducted to the Council chamber at White- hall. His fortitude had been at last overcome by the near pros- pect of death ; and on this occassion he gave important infor- mation, t Such information as he had in his power to give was indeed at that moment much needed. Both an invasion and an insur- rection were hourly expected. :(: Scarcely had William set out from London when a great French fleet commanded by the Count of Tourville left the port of Brest and entered the British Channel. Tourville was the ablest maritime commander that his country then possessed. He had studied every part of his profession. It was said of him that he was competent to fill any place on shipboard from that of carpenter up to that of Admiral. It was said of him, also, that to the dauntless cour- age of a seaman he united the suavity and urbanity of an ac- complished gentleman. He now stood over to the English shore, and approached it so near that his ships could be plainly descried from the ramparts of Plymouth. From Plymouth he proceeded slowly along the coast of Devonshire and Dorsetshire. * Baden to Van Citters, June 20-30, 1690 ; Clarendon's Diary, June 19 ; Lut- trell's Diary. t Clarendon's Diary, June 25. t Luttrell's Diary. Memoirs of Saint Simon. WILLIAM AND MART. 539 There was great reason to apprehend that his movements had been concerted with the English malecontents.* The Queen and her Council hastened to take measures for the defence of the country against both foreign and domestic enemies. Torrington took the command of the English fleet which lay in the Downs, and sailed to Saint Helens. He was there joined by a Dutch squadron under the command of Evert- sen. It seemed that the cliffs of the Isle of Wight would wit- ness one of the greatest naval conflicts recorded in history. A hundred and fifty ships of the line could be counted at once from the watchtower of Saint Catharine. On the east of the ' huge precipice of Black Gang Chine, and in full view of the richly wooded rocks of Saint Lawrence and Ventnor, were col- lected the maritime forces of England and Holland. On the west, stretching to that white cape where the waves roar among the Needles, lay the armament of France. It was on the twenty-sixth of June, less than a fortnight after Willliam had sailed for Ireland, that the hostile fleets took up these positions. A few hours earlier, there had been an im- portant and anxious sitting of the Privy Council at Whitehall. The malecontents who were leagued with France were alert and full of hope. Mary had remarked, while taking her airing, that Hyde Park was swarming with them. The whole board was of opinion that it was necessary to arrest some persons of whose guilt the government had proofs. When Clarendon was named, something was said in his behalf by his friend and rela- tion Sir Henry Capel. The other councillors stared, but re- mained silent. It was no pleasant task to accuse the Queen's kinsman in the Queen's presence. Mary had scarcely ever opened her lips at Council : but now, being possessed of clear proofs of her uncle's treason in his own handwriting, and know- ing that respect for her prevented her advisers from proposing what the public safety required, she broke silence. " Sir Henry," she said, " I know, and everybody here knows as well as I, that there is too much against my Lord Clarendon to leave him out." The warrant was drawn up ; and Capel signed it with * London Gazette, June 26, 1090 ; Baden to Van Citters, ? u " e -^ July 4. 540 HISTORY OP ENGLAND. the rest. "I am more sorry for Lord Clarendon," Mary wrote to her husband, " than, may be, will be believed." That even- ing Clarendon, and several other noted Jacobites, were lodged in the Tower.* When the Privy Council had risen, the Queen and the interior Council of Nine had to consider a question of the gravest importance. What orders were to be sent to Torring- ton ? The safety of the State might depend on his judgment and presence of mind ; and some of Mary's advisers apprehend- ed that he would not be found equal to the occasion. Their anxiety increased when news came that he had abandoned the- coast of the Isle of Wight to the French, and was retreating before them towards the Straits of Dover. The sagacious O Caermarthen and the enterprising Monmouth agreed in blaming these cautious tactics. It was tr.ue that Torrington had not so m'any vessels as Tourville : but Caermarthen thought that, at such a time, it was advisable to fight, although against odds ; and Monmouth was, through life, for fighting at all times and against all odds. Russell, who was indisputably one of the best seamen of the age, held that the disparity of numbers was not such as ought to cause any uneasiness to an officer who com- manded English and Dutch sailors. lie therefore proposed to send to the Admiral a reprimand couched in terms so severe that the Queen did not like to sign it. The language was much softened : but, in the main, Russell's advice was followed. Torrington was positively ordered to retreat no further, and to give battle immediately. Devonshire, however, was still unsat- isfied. " It is my duty, Madam," he said," to tell Your Majesty exactly what I think on a matter of this importance ; and I think that my Lord Torrington is not a man to be trusted with the fate of three kingdoms." Devonshire was right: but his colleagues were unanimously of opinion that to supersede a commander in sight of the enemy, and on the eve of a general action, would be a course full of danger ; and it is difficult to say that they were wrong. " You must either," said Russell, Mary to "William, June 26, 1G90 ; Clarendon's Diary of the same date ; Lut- trell's Diary. WILLIAM AND MAKT. 541 " leave him where he is, or send for him as a prisoner." Several expedients were suggested. Caermarthen proposed that Russell should be sent to assist Torrington. Monmouth passionately implored permission to join the fleet in any capacity, as a captain, or as a volunteer. " Only let me be once on board ; and I pledge my life that there shall be a battle." After much discussion and hesitation, it was resolved that both Russell and Monmouth should go down to the coast.* They set out, but too late. The despatch which ordered Torrington to fight had preceded them. It reached him when he was off Beachy Head, lie read it, and was in a great strait. Not to give battle was to be guilty of direct disobedience. To give battle was, in his judgment, to incur serious risk of defeat. He probably suspect- ed, for he was of a captious and jealous temper, that the instructions which placed him in so painful a dilemma had been framed by enemies and rivals with a design unfriendly to his fortune and his fame. He was exasperated by the thought that he was ordered about and overruled by Russell, who, though his inferior in professional rank, exercised, as one of the Council of Nine, a supreme control over all the departments of the public service. There seems to be no sufficient ground for charging Torrington with disaffection. Still less can it be suspected that an officer, whose whole life had been passed in confronting danger, and who had always borne himself bravely, wanted the personal courage which hundreds of sailors on board of every ship under his command possessed. But there is a higher courage of which Torrington was wholly destitute. He shrank from all responsibility, from the responsibility of fighting, and from the responsibility of not fighting ; and he^ succeeded in finding out a middle way which united all the inconveniences which he wished to avoid. He would conform to the letter of his instructions : yet he would not put everything to hazard. Some of his ships should skirmish with the enemy : but the great body of his fleet should not be risked. It was evident that the vessels which engaged the French would be placed in a most dangerous situation, and would suffer much loss ; aud Mary to William, Juiie 28, and July 2, 1C90. 542 . HISTORY OP ENGLAND. there is but too good reason to believe that Torrington was base enough to lay his plans in such a manner that the danger and loss might fall almost exclusively to the share of the Dutch. He bore them no love ; and in England they were so unpopular that the destruction of their whole squadron was likely to cause fewer murmurs than the capture of one of our own frigates. It was on the twenty-ninth of June that the Admiral received the order to fight. The next day, at four in the morning, he bore down on the French fleet and formed his vessels in order of battle. He had not sixty sail of the line, and the French had at least eighty ; but his ships were more strongly manned than those of the enemy. He placed the Dutch in the van and gave them the signal to engage. That signal was promptly obeyed. Evertsen and his countrymen fought with a courage to which both their English allies and their French enemies, in spite of national prejudices, did full justice. In none of Van Tromp's or De Ruyter's battles had the honour of the Batavian flag been more gallantly upheld. During many hours the van maintained the unequal contest with very little assistance from any other part of the fleet. At length the Dutch Admiral drew off, leaving one shattered and dismasted hull to the enemy. His second in command and several officers of high rank had fallen. To keep the sea against the French after this disastrous and ignominious action was impossible. The Dutch ships which had come out of the fight were in lamentable condition. Tor- rington ordered some of them to be destroyed : the rest he took in tow : he then fled along the coast of Kent, and sought a refuge in the Thames. As soon as he was in the river, he ordered all the buoys to be pulled up, and thus made the navi- gation so dangerous, that the pursuers could not venture to follow him.* * Report of the Commissioners of the Admiralty to the Queen, dated Sheer- ness, July 18, 1690 ; Evidence of Captains Cornwall, Jones, Martin and Hubbard, and of Vice Admiral Delaval ; Burnet, ii. 52, and Speaker Onslow's note ; M6- moires du Mar^chal de Tourville ; Memoirs, of Transactions at Sea by Josiah Burchett, Esq., Secretary to the Admiralty, 1703 ; London Gazette, July 3 ; His- torical and Political Mercury for July 1690 ; Mary to William, July 2 ; Torrington to Caermarthen, July 1. The account of the battle in the Paris Gazette of July 15, 1090 is not to be read without shame. " Oil a sjeu que les Hollaiidois a'estoient WILLIAM AND MARY. 543 Tt was, however, thought by many, and especially by the French ministers, that, if Tourville had been more enterprising, the allied fleet might have been destroyed. He seems to have borne, in one respect, too much resemblance to his vanquished opponent. Though a brave man, he was a timid commander. His life he exposed with careless gaiety ; but it was said that he was nervously anxious and pusillanimously cautious when his professional reputation was in danger. He was so much annoyed by these censures that he soon became, unfortunately for his country, bold even to temerity.* .* There has scarcely ever been so sad a day in London as that on which the news of the Battle of Beachy Head arrived. The shame was insupportable : the peril was imminent. What if the victorious enemy should do what De Ruyter had done ? What if the dockyards of Chatham should again be destroyed ? What if the Tower itself should be bombarded ? What if the vast wood of masts and yardarms below London Bridge should be in a blaze ? Nor was this all. Evil tidings had just arrived from the Low Countries. The allied forces under Waldeck had, in the neighbourhood of Fleurus, encountered the French com- manded by the Duke of Luxemburg. The day had been long and fiercely disputed. At length the skill of the French general and the impetuous valour of the French cavalry had prevailed. f Thus at the same moment the army of Lewis was victorious in Flanders, and his navy was in undisputed possession of the Channel. Marshal Humieres with a considerable force lay not far from the Straits of Dover. It had been given out that he was about to join Luxemburg. But the information which the English government received from able military men in the tres bien battus, et qu'ils s'estoient comportez en cette occasion en braves gens, mais que les Anglois n'en avoient pas agi de memc." In the French official relation of the battle off Cape Bevezier, an odd corruption of Pevensey. are eoine passages to the same effect : " Les Hollandois combattirent avec beaucoup de courage et de fermete ; mais ils lie f urent pas bien secondez par les Anglois." " Les Anglois se distinguerent des valsseaux de liollaade par le peu de valeur qu'lls montrerent dans le combat-" ' Life of James, ii. 409 ; Burnet, 11. 5. t London Gazette, June 30, 1690 ; Historical and Political Mercury for July 1690. 544 HISTOKY OP ENGLAND. Netherlands and from spies who mixed with the Jacobites, and which to so great a master of the art of war as Marl borough seemed to deserve serious attention, was that the army of Ilumieres would instantly march to Dunkirk and would there be taken on board of the fleet of Tourville.* Between the coast of Artois and the Nore not a single ship bearing the red cross of Saint George could venture to show herself. The em- barkation would be the business of a few hours. A few hours more might suffice for the voyage. At any moment London might be appalled by the news that twenty thousand French veterans were in Kent. It was notorious that, in every part of the kingdom, the Jacobites had been, during some months, mak- ing preparations for a rising. All the regular troops who could be assembled for the defence of the island did not amount to more than ten thousand men. It may be doubted whether our country has ever passed through a more alarming crisis than that of the first week of July 1C90. But the evil brought with it its own remedy. Those little knew England who imagined that she could be in danger at once of rebellion and invasion : for in truth the danger of in- vasion was the l>est security against the danger of rebellion. The cause of James was the cause of France ; and though to superficial observers the French alliance seemed to be his chief support, it really was the obstacle which made his restoration impossible. In the patriotism, the too often unamiable and unsocial patriotism of our forefathers, lay the secret at once of William's weakness and of his strength. They were jealous of his love for Holland : but they cordially sympathised with his hatred of Lewis. To their strong sentiment of nationality are to be ascribed almost all those petty annoyances which made the throne of the Deliverer, from his accession to his death, so uneasy a seat. But to the same sentiment it is to be ascribed that his throne, constantly menaced and frequently shaken, was never subverted. For, much as his people detested his foreign favourites, they detested his foreign adversaries still more. The Dutch were Protestants ; the French were Papists. The Dutch t Nottingham to William, July 15, 1090. WILLIAM AND MARY. 545 were regarded as selfseeking, grasping, overreaching allies : the French were mortal enemies. The worst that could be appre- hended from the Dutch was that they might obtain too large a share of the patronage of the Crown, that they might throw on us too large a part of the burdens of the war, that they might obtain commercial advantages at our expense. But the French would conquer us : the French would enslave us : the French would inflict on us calamities such as those which had turned the fair fields and cities of" the Palatinate into a desert. The hopgrounds of Kent would be as the vineyards of the Neckar. The High Street of Oxford and the close of Salisbury would be piled with ruins such as those which covered the spots where the palaces and churches -of Heidelberg and Manheim had once stood. The parsonage overshadowed by the old steeple, the farmhouse peeping from among beehives and appleblossoms, the manorial hall embosomed in elms, would be given up to a soldiery which knew not what it was to pity old men or delicate women, or sucking children. The words, " The French are coming," like a spell, quelled at once all murmurs about taxes and abuses, about "William's ungracious manners and Portland's lucrative places, and raised a spirit as high and unconquerable as had per- vaded, a hundred years before, the ranks which Elizabeth re- viewed at Tilbury. Had the army of Humieres landed, it would assuredly have been withstood by every male capable of bearing arms. Not only the muskets and pikes but the scythes and pitchforks would have been too few for the hundreds of thousands who, forgetting all distinction of sect or faction, would have risen up like one man to defend the English soil. The immediate effect therefore of the disasters in the Channel and in Flanders was to unite for a moment the great body of the people. The national antipathy to the Dutch seemed to be suspended. Their gallant conduct in the fight off Beachy Head was loudly applauded. The inaction of Torrington was loudly condemned. London set the example of concert and of exer- tion. The irritation produced by the late election at once sub- sided. All distinctions of party disappeared. The Lord Mayor was summoned to attend the Queen. She requested him to VOL. III. 35 546 HISTORY OF ENGLAND. ascertain as soon as possible what the capital would undertake to do if the enemy should venture to make a descent. He called together the representatives of the wards, conferred with them, and returned to Whitehall to report that they had unani- mously bound themselves to stand by the government with life and fortune ; that a hundred thousand pounds were ready to be paid into the Exchequer ; that ten thousand Londoners, well armed and appointed, were prepared to march at an hour's notice ; and that an additional force, consisting of six regiments of foot, a strong regiment of horse, and a thousand dragoons, should be instantly raised without costing the Crown a farthing. Of Her Majesty the City had nothing to ask, but that she would be pleased to set over these troops officers in whom she could confide. The same spirit was shown in every part of the coun- try. Though in the southern counties the harvest was at hand, the rustics repaired with unusual cheerfulness to the musters of the militia. The Jacobite country gentlemen, who had, during several months, been laying in swords and carbines for the insurrection which was to take place as soon as William was gone and as help arrived from France, now that William was gone, now that a French invasion was hourly expected, burned their commissions signed by James, and hid their arms behind wainscots or in haystacks. The malecontents in the towns were insulted wherever they appeared, and were forced to shut them- selves up in their houses from the exasperated populace.* Nothing is more interesting to those who love to study the intricacies of the human heart than the effect which the public danger produced on Shrewsbury. For a moment he was again the Shrewsbury of 1688. His nature, lamentably unstable, was not ignoble ; and the thought, that, by standing foremost in the de- fense of his country at so perilous a crisis, he might repair his great fault and regain his own esteem, gave new energy to his body and his mind. He had retired to Epsom, in the hope that repose and pure air would produce a salutary effect on his shat- tered frame and wounded spirit. But a few hours after the * Burnet, ii. 53, 54 ; Narcissus Luttrell's Diary, July 7, 11, 1690 ; London Gazette, July 14, 1690. WILLIAM AND MART. 547 news of the Battle of Beachy Head had arrived, he was at Whitehall, and had offered his purse and sword to the Queen. It had been in contemplation to put the fleet under the com- mand of some great nobleman with two experienced naval offi- cers to advise him. Shrewsbury begged that, if such an arrange- ment were made, he might be appointed. It concerned, he said, the interest and the honour of every man in the kingdom not to let the enemy ride victorious in the Channel ; and he would glad- ly risk his life to retrieve the lost fame of the English flag.* His offer was not accepted. Indeed, the plan of dividing the naval command between a man of quality who did not know the points of the compass, and two weatherbeaten old seamen who had risen from being cabin boys to be Admirals, was very wise- ly laid aside. Active exertions were made to prepare the allied squadrons for service. Nothing was omitted which could assuage the natural resentment of the Dutch. The Queen sent a Privy Councillor, charged with a special mission to the States General. He was the bearer of a letter to them in which she extolled the valour of Evertsen's gallant squadron. She assured them that their ships should be repaired in the English dockyards, and that the wounded Dutchmen should be as carefully tended as wounded Englishmen. It was announced that a strict inquiry would be instituted into the causes of the late disaster ; and Torrington, who indeed could not at that moment have appeared in public without risk of being torn 'in pieces, was sent to the To \ver.f During the three days which followed the arrival of the disastrous tidings from Beachy Head the aspect of London was gloomy and agitated. But on the fourth day all was changed. Bells were pealing : flags were flying : candles were arranged in the windows for an illumination : men were eagerly shaking hands with each other in the streets. A courier had that morn- ing arrived at Whitehall with great news from Ireland. * Mary to "William, July 3, 10, 1690 ; Shrewsbury to Caermarthen, July 15. t Mary to the States General. July 12; Burchett's Memoirs; An important account of some remarkable Passages in the Life of Arthur, Earl of Torrlugton, un. UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY Los Angeles This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. JUN 6 I I960, ,iN LOAN A.M. _7!8|9HO|lH 1 g l A NOV 2 1964 4 7 1973 !3!4'5I6 Form L9-32m-8,'58(5876s4)444 UCSOUTHERN_REGIONAL-= ;: ^ | ' 000947180 6 t r . w o = PLEA^F: DO NOT REMOVE THIS BOOK CARD University Research Library O Lfl QD 00 I 1 it